Swiss International Airlines has returned to passenger service an Airbus A220 airplane that filled with smoke during a flight from Bucharest to Zurich just before Christmas, which resulted in the tragic death of a young flight attendant who had rushed to help passengers.
The seven-year-old aircraft had been grounded in Graz, Austria, where the plane made an emergency landing on December 23, 2024, for several weeks, but on January 9, it was ferried back to Zurich in preparation for its return to commercial operation.
On January 16, the plane (registration: HB-JCD) completed a two-hour test flight, and on Monday, the airline pressed the aircraft back into service with a short flight from Zurich to Hannover, Germany.
Since Monday, the plane has already flown to a slew of European and North African destinations, including Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Marrakesh, as well as Berlin and Geneva.
In the next couple of days, the aircraft is also expected to fly to Copenhagen as the airline starts to get its money’s worth out of the multi-million-dollar machine.
Explaining why now was the right time to return the aircraft to service, a spokesperson for SWISS said that technicians had “carefully checked and extensively tested the aircraft” before it was cleared to return to the skies.
Accident investigators currently believe that a previously undiscovered issue with one of the two Pratt & Whitney engines fitted to the plane was the cause of the smoke that quickly filled the plane during flight LX1885 on December 23.
The engine involved in the incident has been replaced and thoroughly tested.
Perhaps an indication of just how much smoke was involved in the incident, a spokesperson for SWISS said the airline also replaced the carpet and all the seat covers before the plane was allowed to fly with passengers onboard.
A 23-year-old flight attendant who was working on flight LX1885 fell unconscious before the plane landed in Graz and had to be airlifted to hospital where he remained on life support for more than a week before he tragically died.
The public prosecutor’s office in Graz confirmed that the preliminary cause of death of the unnamed victim was hypoxic brain damage and cerebral edema, although detailed toxicology reports are still to be returned.
Investigators are attempting to work out whether breathing in the smoke may have contributed to the crew member’s death. There is also the possibility that a special ‘smoke heard’ that was meant to protect the flight attendant and allow him to work in the smoke-filled cabin could have contributed to his death.
In 2023, SWISS announced that it was urgently replacing more than 1,000 smoke hoods after discovering that some had ‘partially limited’ functionality and did not work as expected.
Although the airline has declined to confirm whether there was any link between those issues and the death of the flight attendant, the crew member collapsed shortly after putting on the hood – often known as ‘protective breathing equipment.’
Distraught colleagues of the victim have been told that they do not have to work on the plane involved in his death, while the airline says that it will make any adjustments necessary if or when accident investigators or its own technicians highlight an issue.
