Last week, a TUI Boeing 787 due to operate a flight between Barbados and London Gatwick was damaged by a ground vehicle.
This is the second incident in three weeks involving such airport-related infrastructure and the airline’s long-haul aircraft.
Without further ado, let’s get into it…
BY21 Barbados-London Disrupted…
TUI flight BY21 is a routine scheduled flight between Bridgetown in Barbados and London Gatwick.
G-TUIJ was the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner expected to operate this flight on March 7.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-TUIJ is a 7.8 year old airframe that was delivered to the airline in June 2016.
Of the 787 variants, TUI UK has the following:
- Eight -8s (7 in active service & one parked).
- 5 -9s (4 in active service & one parked).
Their 787s have an average fleet age of 8.4 years.
Furthermore, reporting from aviation24 states that the aircraft was parked when the collision from the ground vehicle occurred.
As a result, the flight was cancelled due to the extent of the damage, although no imagery has been released yet.
The next day, the affected passengers were placed on G-TUID, one of TUI’s 787-8s for the flight back to London from Barbados.
BY21 departed at 2152 local time on March 8 and landed into Gatwick at 0918 local time the next morning.
As for G-TUIJ, the aircraft involved in the incident, it remained grounded until March 9.
On March 9, as TOM908P, the aircraft flew back to London Gatwick from Barbados, where it has been since at the time of writing (10/3/24 @ 1930 UK time).
Overall, it is unclear what the extent of the damage is, as well as how long it will take to fix.
Second Mishap in Three Weeks…
This is the second mishap involving ground vehicles and TUI 787s in three weeks.
As well as what has happened in Barbados to the London flight, another occurrence happened.
On February 20, it was revealed that a TUI UK Boeing 787 Dreamliner was involved in a door mishap at Birmingham Airport.
It is understood that the aircraft involved is named Neil, which would be registered as G-TUIF.
As per data from Planespotters.net, G-TUIF is a 9.6 year old Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
It started out life with the carrier under the Thomson Airways brand back in July 2014.
The jet was handed over to the current TUI UK subsidiary back in October 2017, where it has been since.
So it remains clear that both G-TUIF & TUIJ have not had a fun couple of weeks.
G-TUIF has not been back in the air since the Birmingham mishap last month.
As for TUIJ, it is unclear how long the aircraft will be grounded for, with the Barbados-London incident unclear in damage specification.
Let’s see how the maintenance teams get on moving forward.
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