Lufthansa A321 near London on Oct 21st 2012, strong odour in cockpit and cabin

Last Update: January 15, 2013 / 11:50:30 GMT/Zulu time

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Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 21, 2012

Classification
Incident

Airline
Lufthansa

Flight number
LH-902

Departure
Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Destination
London Heathrow, United Kingdom

Aircraft Registration
D-AISL

Aircraft Type
Airbus A321

ICAO Type Designator
A321

A Lufthansa Airbus A321-200, registration D-AISL performing flight LH-902 from Frankfurt/Main (Germany) to London Heathrow,EN (UK), was descending through FL120 towards London when the first officer noticed a strong worrying smell in the cockpit combined with irritation of eyes and throat as well as nausea prompting both flight crew to don their oxygen masks, declare PAN and perform a safe priority landing on Heathrow's runway 09L about 20 minutes later.

Germany's BFU reported in their monthly bulletin that the odour was noticed also in the cabin, a number of passengers also complained about irritations of eyes and throats and nausea. After vacating the runway the aircraft stopped on the adjacent taxiway, the air conditioning systems and engines were shut down, the air on board rapidly improved. Both pilots and all 4 cabin crew went to medical checks to a hospital in London, returned to Frankfurt as passengers and underwent a medical examination at a hospital in Frankfurt. The medical examination found no anomaly. The aircraft departed London after about 90 minutes on the ground, positioned back to Frankfurt with airline technicians on board taking measurements, amongst them electronic air quality measurement and video borescopic examination of the engines but also did not detect any anomaly.

Following arrival in Frankfurt the aircraft resumed service one hour after landing in Frankfurt and about 4 hours after landing in London.
Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 21, 2012

Classification
Incident

Airline
Lufthansa

Flight number
LH-902

Departure
Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Destination
London Heathrow, United Kingdom

Aircraft Registration
D-AISL

Aircraft Type
Airbus A321

ICAO Type Designator
A321

This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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