A Vueling A320 aircraft (registration EC-JTR) had to abort its take-off after a bird strike at Barcelona airport, prompting an evacuation through the emergency slides.
On July 16, 2023, at 9.10am local time, Vueling flight VY2212 was about to take off from Barcelona-El Prat (BCN) airport bound for Sevilla (SVQ), in southern Spain, when one of the aircraft engines ingested a bird as it was rolling at high speed on the runway.
Footage shared on social media by one of the passengers (who happened to be off-duty cabin crew) as well as by bystanders show the moment passengers leave the aircraft and, later, the A320 on the tarmac, with all of its emergency slides deployed.
No one was, reportedly, injured in the incident, although firefighters intervened to cool down the aircraft’s overheated brakrs and undercarriage.
This incident impacted operations at Barcelona airport, rendering runway 24L inoperative for a period of about 3 hours and forcing the remaining inbound and outbound flights to be reallocated to the airport’s other two runways. This resulted in multiple flights being delayed and numerous inbound aircraft flying holding patterns in the airspace around Barcelona.
Vueling posted an update on its Twitter account confirming the affected passengers had been assigned another aircraft and would depart shortly after midday to their destination.
The fact that, as it has also been the case in several other incidents, some passengers were seen evacuating the aircraft with their hand luggage prompted critical comments and outrage among the aviation community on social media.
