By a Staff Reporter
A VIOLENT hailstorm rocked a holiday jet flying from Larnaca to Manchester on Monday, causing it to plunge thousands of feet, tearing a hole in the nose cone and shattering the windshield, British newspapers reported yesterday.
The extent of the damage was not apparent until the aircraft landed on Monday night at 7.10pm.
Terrified passengers returning from a Cyprus-based cruise on board the British Midlands flight were thrown to the ceiling and sent sprawling in the aisles as the aircraft dropped 11,000 feet over Germany within three to five minutes.
The Airbus A321 was carrying 231 passengers who had been on a week-long Mediterranean cruise with the tour company MyTravel.
Passenger David Mallon, 59, from Salford told British reporters. “It was an experience I don’t ever want to go through again. It was horrific and the plane must have dropped thousands of feet and slowed right down,” he said. “Then the pilot came on, calm as you like. We were scared to death.”
The airline insisted yesterday that it was only “minor damage” and that at no point were passengers at risk. Speaking on behalf of British Midlands, Claire Allen said that because the nose cone was not a pressurized area, the damage was not dangerous to those on board.
No one was hurt in the incident, the company said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
