The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) set up a task force to investigate Vietnam Airlines’ use of an aircraft with a substandard concave shell to carry passengers on a flight to southern Phu Quoc Island earlier this month.

The plane in question, an Airbus A321 registered as VN-A603, carried passengers aboard flight VN1823 from Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City to Phu Quoc Airport on April 17, the CAAV said in its report to the Ministry of Transport.

As it arrived at the parking lot, an engineer found that the plane had some dents ranging from 64 to 67 centimeters long on the back of the fuselage.

Preliminary assessment showed that the damage exceeded permissible limits according to the maintenance manual of the Airbus aircraft manufacturer, posing a high safety threat. 

Therefore, the aircraft was suspended for examination and repair.

Based on footage from security cameras and documents from related personnel, officials of the CAAV and the Southern Airports Authority discovered that after the VN-A603 aircraft had its tail assembly maintained at Tan Son Nhat on the night of April 16, a forklift driver improperly moved the vehicle out of the plane, causing the safety shield on the forklift to collide with the fuselage, leaving the dents.

In addition, the technical staff and the captain who performed the pre-flight inspection on the next day failed to discover those defects until after the post-flight inspection at Phu Quoc Airport.

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