‘DEI Will Get People Killed’: Missing Wing Fasteners Cancel Virgin Atlantic Flight Moments Before Takeoff

LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 11: A Virgin Airways aircraft at Heathrow Airport on October 11,
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Olivia Rondeau

A Virgin Atlantic flight was canceled just moments before takeoff from Manchester, U.K. last Monday after a passenger alerted the crew to several bolts missing from one of the plane’s wings.

British traveler Phil Hardy was all set to fly to New York City on January 15 when he noticed four missing fasteners during an onboard passenger safety briefing, reports the New York Post.

The man was traveling with his partner, Magdalena Bobusi, when he realized that something was amiss.

“I’m a good flier, but my partner was not loving the information I was telling her and starting to panic, and I was trying to put her mind at rest as much as I could,” Hardy told the Kennedy News agency. “I thought it was best to mention it to a flight attendant to be on the safe side.”

Upon telling the flight crew, engineers were called to perform maintenance checks on the Airbus A330, a Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said.

Footage captured by Hardy shows an engineer tinkering with the screws on top of the plane’s wing.

While Hardy said airline staff reassured him that there was no safety issue, his fears remained heightened after reading of the recent Alaska Airlines fiasco in which a gaping hole opened in the passenger cabin mid-flight.

The Virgin Atlantic representative said the airline ended up canceling the flight heading to John F. Kennedy International Airport in order to “provide time for precautionary additional engineering maintenance checks, which allowed our team the maximum time to complete their inspections.”

“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and this was not compromised at any point,” the spokesperson said in a statement obtained by the Post. “We always work well above industry safety standards and the aircraft is now back in service.”

Neil Firth, Airbus’ local A330 chief wing engineer, added that the missing screws were on a secondary structure panel used to improve aerodynamics.

“Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate,” he said. “As a precautionary measure, the aircraft underwent an additional maintenance check, and the fasteners were replaced.”

The canceled flight’s passengers were rebooked on different flights to New York.

“We’d like to apologize to our customers for the delay to their journeys,” the airline representative said.

Critics took to social media to slam Virgin Atlantic’s push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over apparent safety risks, with the conservative account Libs of TikTok posting an advertisement in which drag queens portrayed crew members. 

“Perhaps @VirginAtlantic should focus more on safety and less on DEI and drag queens,” the account, created by activist Chaya Raichik, said.

“DEI will get people k*lled,” she said in another post slamming the airline.

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