Turkish Airlines A330 already damaged in just 3 days

Recently, just on Sunday, it was announced that Turkish Airlines had received the delivery of one of their WOW Air’s former Airbus A330 nine-year-old aircraft which was registered at TC-LOL. Unfortunately, the said aircraft has already been involved in an accident at exactly three days right after it entered service with its flag carrier.

Just last week, TC-LOL was able to join the existing fleet of Turkish Airlines. The said aircraft was delivered to Singapore Airlines in the year 2010 and later on, after five years, it was then stored until it joined WOW Air’s fleet in 2016. In April, WOW Air had collapsed that make way for the fleet to enter service with Turkish Airlines.

On December 27, the aircraft flew to Istanbul to be a part of the Turkish Airlines fleet. Since then, it has been in operation on the domestic routes within Turkey. The aircraft’s first-ever international flight is to Port Harcourt in Nigeria. According to the data gathered, the said flight seemed uneventful apart from running late. It departed from Istanbul at 23:17 however, it’s original scheduled supposed to be at 19:25, almost four hours earlier. As it flew, the aircraft climbed to a height of almost 34,000 feet heading towards the southwest path. The reception of the flight on FR24 was lost as it reached North Africa and reappeared at 37,000 feet over Niger. It was then beginning to descent into Port Harcourt in the skies above Nigeria.

There’s indeed a lack of coverage at the destination. The return flight was then canceled and the TC-LOL has remained on the ground in Nigerian upon landing and suffered substantial damage at around 3:30 am local time. As per the Turkish Air News, A330 had a runway excursion as the aircraft landed next to the runway due to the confusion of the runway lights. The pilots thought that the lights along the edge of the runway where in fact it’s the runway center lights.

It’s a relief that no one was injured and the incident is still being investigated. Though it sucks since it happened to an aircraft that was just delivered recently. Hopefully, an investigation can determine exactly what was wrong with the said flight. Also, the flight itself was delayed that’s why it landed very late at night. Meaning to say, crew fatigue is more likely to be one of the issues. This is not the first major runway excursion that happened to Turkish Airline’s fleet. In 2015, A330 also suffered serious damage as it landed in Kathmandu in Nepal.