Description

On 25 December 2013, an Airbus A330-300 (G-VNYC) being operated by Virgin Atlantic Airways on a scheduled international passenger flight from Tobago to St . Lucia as VS98 completed a stable approach in night IMC but the crew found that the initial landing roll needed atypical intervention to ensure direction along the runway was maintained and detected both ‘juddering’ and a more significant rate of deceleration than usual. Considerable impact damage to the lower fuselage and below-floor systems was subsequently discovered.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Eastern Caribbean CAA under the provision of the St Lucia CARs 2007. Relevant recorded flight data was obtained from Airbus. A Preliminary Report detailing initial progress with the Investigation was published on 23 August 2018.

It was noted that the 50 year-old Captain had a total of 13,000 hours flying experience of which 9,800 hours were on the A330/340. The 30 year-old First Officer had a total of 4,783 hours flying experience of which 807 hours were on the A330.