On February 12, a SriLankan Airlines Airbus A330 bound for Colombo made a u-turn back to Melbourne amid reports of smoke in the cockpit.
Incident: SriLankan Airlines A330: Melbourne-Colombo Smoke in the Cockpit…
SriLankan Airlines flight UL605, operated by an A330 is a routine scheduled flight between Melbourne-Colombo, with the affected rotation having smoke in the cockpit being operated by 4R-ALQ.
As per data from Planespotters.net, 4R-ALQ is a 8.2 year old Airbus A330-300 that was delivered to the carrier back in December 2015.
Of the A330 variant, the airline has two of the -200 variant and seven of the -300 variant, with all of them being in active service and holding an average fleet age of 10.6 years.
SriLankan Airlines flight UL605 departed Melbourne at 1832 local time on February 12 and proceeded in a north-westerly direction towards Colombo.
Not long after departure, the crew onboard the aircraft performed a u-turn back in the direction of the origin airport, and declared an emergency following reports of smoke in the cockpit.
After around an hour in the air, it is understood that the Airbus A330 landed safely back into the Australian airport, where the aircraft was met by emergency crews on arrival, as per TravelTalk.
4R-ALQ, at the time of writing (12/2/24 @ 1930 UK time), has remained on the ground in Melbourne, with no indication into when it will continue onwards to Colombo following the SriLankan A330 having smoke in the cockpit.
All eyes will be when the aircraft departs again in the coming days and weeks ahead.
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