A terrified plane passenger has revealed the horrifying moment when they realised a jet they had just flown on was apparently held together with gaffa tape.
Shocking images, taken after the plane touched down at Rome’s Fiumicino airport in Italy after arriving from Cagliari in Sardinia, appear to show a huge hole in the Ita Airways Airbus fuselage, on Wednesday, 2nd August.
Instead of a proper repair, the damage had apparently been fixed with the gaffa tape.
Sardinian parliamentarian Mauro Pili, 56, shared the images and said: “They treat us like a third-world colony. A plane patched with sticky tape, that hadn’t happened to me yet.”
The politician predicted that the airline would only shrug it off.
He said: “They will say that everything is in order.”
Ita Airways later described the repair as temporary and said that it complied with the industry’s safety standards.
They said in a statement: “Ita Airways always operates in compliance with the safety standards dictated by the competent authorities and with total respect for its passengers and on-board staff.
“The maintenance intervention was necessary to temporarily deal with damage found on a panel.
“This action was carried out in compliance with the manuals approved by the manufacturer which in these cases provides for the use of specific metallic ‘high-speed tape’ for specific aeronautical use.”
The airline added: “In the specific case of flight AZ1588, operating the Cagliari-Rome Fiumicino route, the aircraft was fully functional and took off from Cagliari at 7:21 am, landing in Fiumicino at 8:14 am, 9 minutes ahead of schedule, without presenting problems of a technical nature.”
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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