I wrote about Sunday night’s JetBlue flight from Barbados to New York JFK where the Airbus A321 tipped back on its tail after it had parked at the gate. There’s now more footage from as this was happening, including from inside the aircraft.
— Andrew Brunk (@ABrunky) October 23, 2023
The center of gravity matters for an aircraft. This is frequently a bigger issue for Boeing 737-900s, where airlines often use tail stands to prevent them from pitching backwards on the ground. But where cargo and luggage are sitting matters, and how it’s removed matters, even on an Airbus jet.
We now have video from inside the plane, where passengers hadn’t gotten off yet when this happened.
About half the passengers had already exited the aircraft. Those still on board screamed when it happened. Thankfully there wasn’t anyone caught stepping off the plane as it fell.
Passengers heard that the plane’s nose was “10 feet in the air.” Passengers were told “little by little” to “move to the center of the airplane.” Then they were taken off of the aircraft two rows at a time.
Tiktoker was on the JetBlue flight that tipped up at JFK pic.twitter.com/PJuexW7BVu
— Sam Ro (@SamRo) October 23, 2023
Memo to the Department of Justice, maybe it makes sense that JetBlue is trying to acquire Spirit after all?
I’ve heard of tipping the flight crew, but this takes it to a whole new level. 😀
To help prevent aircraft from tipping on their tail, I wonder if jetBlue will consider adding more morbidly obese passengers as low-cost self-loading ballast for optimum aircraft weight and balance.
a WHOLE NEW problem I never knew could happen. I was wondering when the first article came out, what if people were on the aircraft?
Coach class problems. Please stay in your seats until it is your time to get off of the airplane (sarcasm). This would not happen if the last group to board got off first and all groups got off in reverse order.
Too many Super Sized meals at the airport!!
Attention, Can we have all the fat, I mean weight challenged passengers move to the front of the aircraft.
I wonder if this jetBlue flight had sumo wrestlers returning from their international event.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/16/airline-books-extra-flight-for-sumo-wrestlers-over-weight-concerns/
https://www.abcactionnews.com/airline-forced-to-add-extra-flight-for-group-of-sumo-wrestlers
A whole bunch of unhappy people here blaming persons of size when in reality this issue is most often caused by ramp agents starting by unloading commodities from the front rather than the back. Since the Airbus series aren’t known to have tail stands, and Airbus tipping wasn’t known of as prone to occurring; people just did what they wanted regarding standard work practices.