A320 winglet
 

Yesterday an SLF of my acquaintance noticed that a BA A320 (G-EUUN) was getting ready to leave LHR T5 with one of the winglets missing.

I reassured him about the significance (or rather lack of it), but it set me wondering about how often this happens?

Do winglets get "dinged" by Servair and company all the time, and is ten percent of the fleet flying with one or two missing?

Or is this indeed pretty rare? Does somebody have any statistics?

CJ

PS Hoping for a serious answer, which is why I posted here rather than in JetBlast :)

Do not know how ofter it occurs, but virtually never have I seen it on our fleet. Our operations is one of the largest with airbus. Think I've seen it twice in 15years.

I believe the certification requirements are that one winglet can be missing or gone and no appreciable flight difficulties are encountered.

The CDL (configuration deviation list) will be the document that will allow this. There will be a slight performance penalty.

Same as with other panels and things like landing gear doors.

It is normal operation to keep the aircraft flying when parts or time are not available to repair the aircraft.

I've flown plenty of Airbusses with winglets missing in BA. Its's a non-event, so much so that its difficult to hazard a guess of how often it occurs because it does't really register as anything exciting.

And the cdl penalty is:

TO and App climb performance limiting weights are reduced by 8118kgs

OEI net ceiling is reduced by 756 ft

Fuel consumption is increased by 1.69%

Not exactly a non event?