Why the Belgian Red Devils didn’t fly their dedicated aircraft OO-SNA #Trident to/from Sarajevo

When the Belgian Red Devils fly to a foreign destination to play a qualifying game on their Road to Russia, they usually fly on Brussels Airlines’ A320 OO-SNA sporting their Red Devils livery. Not for the October 7th game in Sarajevo, for which they flew two other Brussels Airlines icons: OO-SNB #Rackham outbound on 6 October, OO-SNF #Amare inbound on 7 October.

Why? Simply because OO-SNA #Trident is out of service. On 27 September, carrying out flight SN3721 from Brussels to Madrid, the aircraft made a hard landing: 2.9 G and bouncing. The return flight SN3722 was cancelled and Airbus was contacted. After inspection, Airbus allowed the plane to fly back to Brussels on 1 October as a ferry flight SN9922, operated with the gear down at low speed (around 500 km/h) and low altitude (FL260).

Since then, OO-SNA did not operate any flight, being in a hangar to be further inspected: engine lowering, landing gear checks, wing attachment checks, etc… ).

Contrarily to what has been said in some media, there was no damage to the landing gear, only a mandatory deep check. This check revealed that there was no damage at all, and the plane is back in service since 13 October, when it carried out flight SN3631 to Paris CDG.

There is an ongoing investigation from Airbus.

According to  Fred M. (see his full comment hereunder) the recorded data show a pitch up command at 20ft, the elevator did its job, but there was no pitch up/brake of the rate of descent. It seems that there was remaining wake turbulence from the preceding flight. And with little wind, these turbulences probably stay longer over the runway.

Thus, as a conclusion, the national football team had to rely on other Brussels Airlines aircraft to go to and come back from Sarajevo for its game against Bosnia/Herzegovina.