Reports of a concerning incident are emerging out of Istanbul after a lifeless body was found in the landing gear of a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330. Maintenance staff discovered the person during a routine check last night.
Daily Sabah reports that ground workers were conducting routine technical maintenance after the twinjet returned from Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS). The team was shocked to see a body in the gear. Subsequently, they called the police, who swiftly arrived to launch an investigation into the matter.
Flight TK1954 departed Amsterdam at 19:15, a delay from the scheduled 18:10 departure. The aircraft then arrived at Istanbul Airport (IST) at 22:40, taking two hours and 53 minutes to complete the journey. All times are local.
The aircraft that conducted the trip is registration TC-JOA, which has been busy hopping to the likes of Bucharest, Dushanbe, Astana, Paris, Luanda, Libreville, Banjul, Abuja, and Dhaka over the last week. According to ch-aviation.com, this A330-200 joined Turkish Airlines’ fleet in March 2014 and is one of 13 units of the variant in the airline’s holdings. The nine-year old is also joined by 12 A330-200Fs and 36 A330-300s.
This is not the first worrying incident involving a dead body on a commercial flight this year. In June, we reported that the remains of an Irish citizen were left behind on an Aegean Airlines A320 in Dublin and were flown back to Greece. Employees on the ground didn’t remove the coffin from the plane before it made the return trip eastward.
Additionally, in January, a pair of bodies were discovered in the undercarriage of an Avianca Airbus A320neo. The two stowaways were looking to fly from Santiago de Chile to Bogotá before they met their fatal end.
They join a long list of people who have faced tragedy when attempting such moves. For instance, late last year, Gambian authorities announced that a person’s body was found in the undercarriage of a TUI Boeing 737 MAX after the aircraft landed at London Gatwick Airport (LGW) from Banjul International Airport (BJL).
urkish Airlines has also had to deal with related events previously this year. In July, one of its Boeing 737 MAX 8s diverted to Algiers after a passenger committed suicide onboard. Moreover, a sick child passed away after one of the carrier’s services was diverted to Budapest to deal with the illness in June.
There are currently no updates regarding details of what led to this week’s events. Notably, the person found on the Turkish Airlines aircraft has not yet been identified at the time of writing.
Simple Flying reached out to Turkish Airlines for comment on this incident. We will update the article with any further announcements from the carrier.
Sources: Daily Sabah; FlightRadar24.com; ch-aviation.com, Simple Flying
