Atlantic airways incident southend

[iwhak]

Anyone hear of an incident involving an Atlantic Airways RJ at SEN this morning?

[mmeteesside]

Departing to Dublin and returned then departed later.

[iwhak]

Heard Atlantic Airways RJ had a serious incident at Southend yesterday. Posted earlier but seems to have been removed. Was departing SEN for DUB for rugby charter to EDI. Allegedly during take off roll crew rotated early to avoid birds resulting in tail strike, and near stall. Aircraft returned for quick patch and apparently operated two hours later.

[Mercenary Pilot]

The damage resulting from a tailscrape would mean a through inspection and notification to the AAIB.

"A quick patch" would be extremely unlikely. :=

[runawayedge]

Heard a similar rumour. Wonder why this is in the spotters forum!

[Munnyspinner]

I heard a similar story at EDI but that it was a precuationary return after suspected birdstrike. Anyone got any more details?

Would agree that tailstrike and 'quick patch' is V. V. unlikley. Also cannot imagine any crew proceeding to operate after suspected tailstrike - even if visual inspection looked OK, who knows what damage may have been caused to a/c structure!

[iwhak]

Yes, I agree with all the posts, however the source confirmed it was a tailstrike with aircraft damage followed by unusual pitch movements before returning to SEN, then departed two hours later to DUB.

[Avman]

Departure to DUB would suggest a ferry flight for a more thorough check at the maintenance company there (forget the name). Local SEN engineers may have inspected and released the a/c for a ferry flight. May well even have flown the trip unpressurised.

[Expressflight]

I believe the aircraft operated the DUB-EDI charter as planned, so there cannot have been any serious damage.

I would certainly be interested to learn the truth of what happened.

[smudgethecat]

no reason whatsover why the aircraft could not have been quickly put back into service following a very minor tail scrape, if the engineers inspecting the damage were satisfied it was within SRM limits, the damage was most likely in a non pressurised area such as the apu accesss door /tail cone area, we recently had similiar happem on a A321, damage was found to the apu access doors which were repaired using HST and the aircraft was permited to fly under concession until a permanent repair was carried out