Virgin staff praised for handling of emergency landing

Last Monday, flights were hit by delays and diversions after a Virgin Atlantic flight was forced to make a dramatic emergency landing at Gatwick Airport. Minute-by-minute updates were posted on Twitter after a set of wheels on the plane failed to drop.

Attraction World’s head of sales, Nick Hughes was on board and praises Virgin staff in this first-person account of the flight.

"We took off approx 11.30am, with the first announcement at approx 12.15pm saying we had to go back to LGW for a technical issue. We then made our way back and started circling (this was off the Devon coast) whilst the Captain dumped the fuel (see picture below).

This went on for about 20-30 minutes and I then got the feeling something was serious as you don’t see that normally and it meant only one thing – that they were readying for an emergency landing of some form.

There was then further Comms saying that there was an issue with the landing gear (13.30 approx) and we were going to be taken through the emergency landing procedures. All instructions were clear, concise and certainly made me feel at ease. The ‘brace, brace’ instruction was clearly vocalised and all passengers that I could see/hear seemed relatively calm, apart from my partner Tracy, from Midcounties Co-operative Travel in Walsall, West Midlands, who is not a very good flyer, and had brought me this five-night trip to Las Vegas to celebrate my birthday on New Years Eve.

Whilst Tracy was very quiet and obviously worried/shaken, I felt calm in the knowledge we were in the best hands and spent most of the three hours looking out over the beautiful English countryside on what was a lovely, sunny evening. A further announcement was made that when we did eventually land, that the Captain was confident that a ‘normal’ landing would in fact be possible and we should all be calm and take confidence from this.

We ended up flying over the South Coast, what I think was the South Downs, Dover and Brighton. Again, we circled several times for an hour or so whilst the Captain (again pre-announced/advised) made several attempts to dislodge the landing gear. This was done by the plane moving from side to side, the body rotating slightly whilst each wing took its turn to go up & down, plus putting on the thrusters to gain altitude, then dropping so many feet – it did have the feeling of a theme park ride – no pun intended.

After, what I feel, was every attempt to ensure the landing gear was back to normal, we were then told that we were going back to LGW for our emergency landing. Clear instructions given, that emergency vehicles were on hand just in case.

As we landed after going through the ‘brace, brace’ procedure for real this time, a big round of applause and I high fived the American gentleman the other side of Tracy… pure relief. One of the softest landings I’ve ever experienced.

The Virgin Atlantic cabin crew and pilots deserve every single ounce of credit. They were calm, clear, supportive when needed and ensured every passenger was safe within their control. A huge thank you must go to the Virgin team who then looked after every passenger, with dinner, hotel, breakfast, toiletries, new underwear (for those really nervous few) and gave every passenger compensation or a full refund. I am sure there are those in the industry who would expect that as a bare minimum, but this was no-one’s fault. The main thing is that everyone was safe."