VIENNA: A hailstorm badly broken a passenger aircraft approaching Vienna on Sunday (Jun 9), the airline mentioned, as Austria grappled with violent thunderstorms and widespread flooding.
Hail broke off a part of the nostril and left cracks within the cockpit home windows of the Austrian Airways plane, which was carrying holidaymakers again from Palma de Mallorca.
After issuing a misery name, the aircraft landed safely at Vienna airport.
Not one of the passengers or crew have been injured within the incident. A number of information retailers reported that the aircraft was carrying 173 passengers and 6 crew members.
“In line with the cockpit crew, the storm was not seen on the climate radar,” the airline mentioned in an announcement despatched to AFP on Monday.
The aircraft had hit a “thunderstorm cell”, Austrian Airways informed ABC information. A passenger who was on the flight informed the US information outlet that these contained in the cabin might hear the hail because it struck the plane.
“It was fairly loud and … tremendous rocky for a minute,” the passenger mentioned, including that the aircraft took about two minutes to fly via the hailstorm.
In current weeks, torrential rains have led to flooding throughout Austria, with firefighters finishing up greater than 2,000 operations in a number of provinces.
The realm near the border with Slovenia and Hungary within the southern provinces of Styria and Burgenland has been particularly laborious hit, with a dam reportedly breaching.
Native authorities mentioned Monday they have been nonetheless trying to find a 77-year-old retiree who went lacking in Burgenland after driving to the polling station to vote in Sunday’s European elections.
In Styria, six polling stations have been flooded or rendered inaccessible on Sunday, native officers informed AFP.
Over the weekend, a 36-year-old Croat died after the excavator he was working fell right into a stream in Styria late on Friday, police mentioned in an announcement, including they take into account his loss of life to be a piece accident.
Austria’s nationwide climate service warned that rainfall would proceed till Wednesday night.