Two Jetstar A320s damaged after fire extinguishers trigger inside Newcastle Airport hangar

Two Jetstar Airbus A320s are out of service after being doused with foam when a fire suppression system triggered inside a maintenance hangar at Newcastle Airport.

The two narrowbodies – VH-VQW and VH-VQC – were inside the hangar when the fire system tripped on April 23 and filled the hangar with foam.

VH-VQW, which arrived at Newcastle on April 19 for maintenance, was completely inside the hangar and suffered damage to its engines, computer and electrical systems, according to The Jetstar Source website.

Meanwhile, sister-ship VH-VQC landed at Newcastle Airport on April 22 for maintenance and had its nose inside the hangar at the time of the incident and suffered engine damage.

A photograph of the scene posted on the Sydney Airport message board showing foam spilling out of the hangar with one Jetstar aircraft visible can be seen here.

A Jetstar spokesman said the incident was believed to have been caused by storm damage.

“Our engineers are currently assessing aircraft that were in the hangar at the time of the event,” the Jetstar spokesman said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

“We expect there will be some works required before returning the aircraft to service, however these won’t be significant.”

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Comments (7)

BANKS

April 28, 2015 at 10:52 pm

Am I the only one that wants to run through all those bubbles?

Ben

April 29, 2015 at 8:56 am

It’s a shame the picture no longer works. I guess Jetstar had it taken down

Leon Burger

May 5, 2015 at 1:03 pm

How much foam can a fire supression system produce to “fill the hangar with foam”?

Neil Hansford

May 5, 2015 at 3:01 pm

If you go back through the Fire and Rescue records the number of false alarms from this installed system might suggest it has never been stable..Maybe JQ need to get another system supplier.