British Airways plane door ripped off in fluke accident at Cape Town airport

British Airways (BA) left a piece of metal behind in South Africa for the second time in a decade, with the door of BA Boeing 777-300 ER ripped off in a fluke accident at Cape Town’s airport.

The London Heathrow-bound flight had to be cancelled and travellers accommodated on alternative flights. In 2013, a British Airways Boeing 747-400 clipped a wing when it collided with a building at ORT International Airport. This week’s incident occurred when the aircraft started pushing back after passengers boarded – but the airbridge operator did not disconnect the aircraft door.

The 160 000kg aircraft’s backward momentum saw the door tear off the fuselage. No passengers or crew were on board at the time of the incident.

The airline said in a statement: “We have apologised to our customers for the slight delay to their departure from Cape Town due to an issue with the original aircraft. Our customers have since arrived safely in London.”

In the ORT incident, a BA 747- 400 aircraft taxied along an incorrect taxiway, hitting an office building behind the SAA Technical Hangars. According to various reports, the pilot turned in the wrong direction, with the collision slicing off the plane’s wing.

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On Christmas Day last year, another incident saw about 200 passengers on board a British Airways flights survive a mid-airmcollision with a block of ice at an altitude of 10 600 metres. The chunk of frozen water originated from another jet, 304m above the BA flight, and smashed onto the aircraft windscreen.

While icefalls are rare, British Civil Aviation (CAA) said on its site: “In comparison to the 2.5 million flights a year in UK airspace during 2017, just seven icefall events were reported to the CAA. Going back to 2013, there were 25 reported events in that year, followed by 12 in both 2014 and 2015, and 10 in 2016.”

Falling ice is also a natural phenomenon, it said. “Falling ice, which is clear and uncontaminated, may not have originated from aviation activity and there have been reports of falling chunks of ice which date back to before
the existence of aircraft.

There is current ongoing research into the phenomena by scientists across the world.”

It went on to cite and example: “In January 2000, unexplained chunks of ice weighing several kilograms fell over the country over a period. The event was unusual in that the skies were reported as cloudless during that time.”

On 2 January, another British Airways flight aborted its first landing attempt after citing possible mechanical issues.

The flight was in-bound from Dubai to London Heathrow.