Because there was not enough fuel on board, a CRJ 900 from Lufthansa Cityline had to return to Katowice shortly after takeoff. Because of a defective display, the aircraft had not previously been refueled with enough kerosene.
You get in your car, drive off and only then notice that your car doesn’t have enough fuel. A quick stop at the nearest gas station solves the problem. However, pilots don’t have it that easy with their aircraft.
On Monday (October 9th), a Bombardier CRJ 900 from Lufthansa Cityline had to return to Katowice in Poland due to a lack of fuel. The plane with the registration D-ACNB took off from there as flight LH1361 towards Frankfurt at 10:34 a.m.
Immediately afterwards, however, she changed course, only climbed to an altitude of around 1,300 meters, turned around, then sank again from this point on and flew back to the departure airport.
Tank was not filled sufficiently due to defective display
At 10:56 a.m. the plane landed again at the Polish airport from where it had taken off, data from the flight tracking service Flightradar shows. First, the Aviation Herald portal, which specializes in incidents, reported that the Lufthansa Cityline plane was not sufficiently fueled and therefore had to fly back to Katowice.
A Lufthansa spokesman then told aeroTELEGRAPH that a temporary defect in the fuel gauge was the reason for the problems. This incorrectly indicated to the cockpit crew on the ground that the tank was sufficiently full, but then changed in the air. Back in Katowice the CRJ 900 was then refueled.
Later flights without incident
“A technician also checked the display, which worked again,” said the spokesman. A further review will take place in Frankfurt. The D-ACNB took off again at 11:33 a.m. and landed at Germany’s largest airport 1:12 hours later.
On the same day, the machine made trips between Frankfurt and Poznan as well as Frankfurt and Friedrichshafen. There is no flight scheduled for Tuesday (October 10).
Airplanes have to cancel flights again and again
It occasionally happens that aircraft have to turn around shortly after take-off and return to the airport from which they had just taken off.
Problems with retracting the landing gear, for example, often cause such a scenario.