Created Friday, Jan 20th 2023 18:09Z, last updated Friday, Jan 20th 2023 18:09Z
An Easyjet Switzerland Airbus A320-200, registration HB-JXO performing flight
U2-1437 from Geneva (Switzerland) to Belgrade (Serbia), was enroute at FL370 about 50nm east of Zagreb (Croatia) when the crew heard a loug bang coming from the nose of the aircraft. The crew subsequently received indications regarding weather radar and antenna located in the forward section of the nose radome. With 135nm to destination remaining the crew decided to continue to Belgrade for a safe landing about 30 minutes later.
Serbia's Center of Investigations of Accidents in Transportation (CINS) rated the occurrence a serious incident causing minor damage and opened an investigation. The nose cone was found dented, no traces of birds, weather balloons or other physical causes were identified.
The CINS released their final report in Serbian only (Editorial note: to serve the purpose of global prevention of the repeat of causes leading to an occurrence an additional timely release of all occurrence reports in the only world spanning aviation language English would be necessary, a Serbian only release does not achieve this purpose as set by ICAO annex 13 and just forces many aviators to waste much more time and effort each in trying to understand the circumstances leading to the occurrence. Aviators operating internationally are required to read/speak English besides their local language, investigators need to be able to read/write/speak English to communicate with their counterparts all around the globe).
The report concludes:
Immediate cause
During the flight, the radar dome suffers a load due to the high speeds of the air current in it zone. This dome had a repair in the central zone with a diameter of 920 mm.
The repair did not provide sufficient structural endurance to the air current load so that cracking occurred in the external formwork, honeycomb and internal formwork.
Indirect causes
Improper turret repair. The repair was not done according to the instructions given in the CMM which caused the reduced structural durability of the radar dome.
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