Source: Simon Hradecky | www.avherald.com

A Laudamotion Airbus A320-200, registration OE-LOX performing flight OE-1342 from Vienna (Austria) to Dublin (Ireland) with 179 people on board, was climing out of Vienna when upon contacting Vienna Radar the crew was unable to establish two way communications, it became clear ground stations could hear the aircraft, but the aircraft could not hear the ground stations on any of their three onboard radios. After trying several frequencies a frequency was found in which two way communication was possible, ATC throughout Europe subsequently arranged specific frequencies for the remainder of the flight to Dublin. The aircraft initially maintained FL300, but near Erfurt (Germany) descended to FL240 on ATC instruction for the remainder of the cruise flight in response to the frequency problem. At about the same time during climb flight attendants noticed a strange odour in the cabin, similiar to menthol or disinfection fluids, for some brief moments, the smell dissipated again. Later into the flight a female passenger fainted and became unconscious for a brief period of time. A doctor on board was called and treated the woman, who became conscious again and was provided with water and cooling compresses. Medical services were requested for the arrival in Dublin, emergency services thus took their standby positions for the arrival in Dublin. During the descent towards Dublin, while descending towards Dublin an intense odour of dirty/old socks was detected by cabin crew, the first officer confirmed smelling that odour, too. Cabin crew reported being dizzy and suffering from headaches, the flight crew remained unaffected so far, maintained routine communication, performed the intercept to final approach and landed on Dublin’s runway 10 about 2.5 hours after departure. Two cabin crew went to see doctors in a Dublin hospital.

The aircraft was unable to perform the return flight and remained on the ground for about 54 hours before returning to Vienna. The aircraft returned to service about 15 hours after landing in Vienna and about 72 hours after landing in Dublin.

The airline told Austrianwings about technical problems on the flight without further clarification despite three attempts by Austrianwings to get more detail. The spokeswoman reported a replacement Ryanair Boeing 737-800 transported the passengers booked onto the return flight to Vienna.

On Nov 28th 2019 The Aviation Herald obtained information about the sequence of events on board of the flight, the source commented: “Due to the rapid fleet expansion Laudamotion apparently did the one or other bad purchases”.

OE-LOX (MSN 3272, former RP-C3244) had been stored in Indonesia and had joined Laudamotion on Nov 20th 2019 arriving in Vienna on Nov 20th 2019 at about 05:00Z (via intermediate stops in India and United Arab Emirates) and was on the first revenue flight for Laudamotion, when the occurrences took place.

On Nov 29th 2019 Austrocontrol, acting as Civil Aviation Authority of Austria, reported that the airline was put under heightened monitoring due to an unusual high number of occurrences in recent months. An investigation had already been opened in September 2019. The Austrian Ministry of Transport reported administrative proceedings are underway which may result in a high penalty.