A Virgin Atlantic plane which linked London (England) to New York (United States) turned back after half an hour of flight on Monday, one of the pilots of the device having not completed his training , reports the BBC.
L’Airbus A330with a capacity of 261 passengers, had been in the air for 40 minutes when the pilots were ordered to turn back to Heathrow airport.
The airline has apologized for the incident and said it was due to “a roster problem”.
According to the company, majority-owned by the group Virgin billionaire Richard Bransonit was internal training protocols that were breached rather than UK aviation or safety regulations.
Clearly, the co-pilot in question was sufficiently qualified to take place in the cockpit, but had not made the “final evaluation flight” required by the company. For his part, the captain, although experienced with several thousand flight hours on the clock, “was not qualified to fly alongside a co-pilot who had not fully completed dedicated Virgin Atlantic training”.
Once the plane is on the ground, the co-pilot was replaced to ensure “full compliance” with company protocols. The flight was then able to resume before the aircraft finally landed at JFK airport in New York two hours and 40 minutes behind the originally scheduled time.
Virgin Atlantic said its internal protocols had been updated to prevent such an incident from happening again in the future.
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