On Thursday evening, 7 December, the Brussels Airlines Airbus A330-300 (registered OO-SFG) was parked at a gate in Abidjan Airport, Ivory Coast, when a truck hit the fuselage of the aircraft.
When required, this type of truck (ambulift) is dispatched to assist passengers with reduced mobility. A forum member explained that – this time – a sick passenger was being assisted during disembarkation.
Brussels Airlines was forced to cancel return flight SN231 back to Belgium. But also two flights to/from New York JFK (10-11 December) and today’s rotation from Brussels via Banjul and Conakry.
At the moment of writing, the aircraft is still grounded in Abidjan.
Nico Cardone, a spokesman for Brussels Airlines, provided the following statement to Aviation24.be:
“One of our Airbus A330 planes has been hit by a ground handling vehicle on Thursday evening (7/12), at Abidjan Airport, in Ivory Coast. This caused damage to the fuselage of the aircraft. At the moment of the incident, there were passengers on board the aircraft, but no one was injured. The aircraft currently is still grounded, and the necessary maintenance work can take some time. In the meantime, we are looking for solutions that have the lowest possible impact on our operations. Some flights can be rerouted to combine destinations, to avoid cancellations. On some other days, we will however have no other option than cancelling a flight, in that case, we will always look for flights where we have the most alternatives to get passengers to their destination as soon as possible.”
The following image was published in the aviation24-forum:
