An Airbus A320 from the Vueling company aborted its takeoff run this morning at the Barcelona airport. After a bird struck while speeding down runway 24L, the commander of flight VY2112, from Barcelona to Seville, decided to stop the plane in full takeoff before going into the air, making sure that the speed still allowed to do so. Canceling the thrust of the engines and applying full power to the brakes, the A320 came to a complete stop at 09:45AM. The landing gear brakes, yes, have overheated from overexertion. To prevent any eventuality and after the authorization of the pilots, the auxiliary crew has carried out an emergency evacuation of all the occupants of the plane using the inflatable slides and assisted by the firefighters, who have immediately arrived at the foot of the plane. Once on the ground, Iberia Airport Services buses, the company in charge of Vueling’s assistance at the airport, have picked up the travelers at the foot of the runway, taking them to the terminal.
The A320 has been stopped in the last third of the runway, in front of the hangars of the Air Force air station in El Prat, very close to the Aena fire station next to T1. Since then, the airport has been operating with a single runway. The aircraft that were going to take off after the evacuated aircraft have maintained their position until receiving further instructions from the controllers. These have had to deal with the situation in a matter of seconds and rethink the operations of departures and arrivals at the airfield. Aircraft that were in motion have been redirected to head 24R, on the main runway. In this, arrivals and departures have since had to be combined, causing some delays.
At 11:35 a.m., the aircraft was towed off the runway and parked at a remote location so that maintenance technicians could carry out a thorough check of possible damage to both the engine and the brakes. The stop has also served so that the ground assistance teams could remove the luggage from the hold and board it on the replacement plane that Vueling has programmed. With the aircraft secured in the car park, the ground crews also went up to recover any personal belongings that might have been left on board after the emergency evacuation.
Faced with the possible evacuation of an aircraft, something that is exceptional, although it can happen at the least expected moment, like this morning, passengers are always asked not to carry any hand luggage or personal belongings. In this way, the departure will be fluid and will be executed in the minimum time both to get out of the plane and away from it, because although it may not seem like it, everything can go wrong at the most unexpected moment. However, and despite the fact that it is an instruction that is always indicated during the pre-flight safety demonstration and which is insisted on during the evacuation, in some photos and videos that can already be seen on the networks, some passengers have ignored and they have evacuated the Airbus with backpacks and carrying other objects. In this case there have been no problems apart from the scare, although any extra that a traveler takes with them during the evacuation can unnecessarily complicate it.
The plane affected by today’s emergency is the one registered as EC-JTR, baptized as ‘No Vueling, no party’, it has the serial number 2798, which means that it is one of the Airbus A320 manufactured during 2006. It was delivered to the company in the summer of that same year, the company’s second anniversary.
Two minutes after noon, an A319 bound for Florence, followed by an A320 bound for Milan-Malpensa, both also from Vueling, were the first to take off from the reopened runway, resuming normal airport operations, with takeoffs on the runway 24L and the landings on 24R, a runway also used for some specific takeoffs of long-haul aircraft to distant destinations. These, loaded with fuel, passengers and cargo, need to use the largest runway available in Barcelona.
