Two people were seriously injured in the accident, while 20 others sustained minor injuries. The aircraft, which was only delivered to Lufthansa in January 2026, sustained serious hull damage after ground equipment tore into the fuselage.<\/p>\n
In a preliminary accident report released on Thursday by Germany\u2019s BFU aviation accident investigation branch, investigators revealed that engineers were carrying out maintenance work and were trying to rectify an issue with the main landing gear door control system.<\/p>\n
As part of this maintenance work, the engineers were working through a checklist that required them to \u2018cycle\u2019 the landing gear. In other words, they would retract the landing gear and then extend the landing gear to test whether the door control system was working correctly.<\/p>\n
To stop the landing gears from physically retracting, locking pins are placed into a designated hole within the landing gear mechanism. The landing gear then cycles, and the door control system operates, but the gears themselves don\u2019t physically retract.<\/p>\n
Investigators discovered that the locking pins for the two main gears were correctly stowed, but the locking pin for the nose landing gear was nowhere to be found. In the end, however, they located it in a storage box in the avionics bay located underneath the cockpit.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting about this accident is that it is reminiscent of a very similar accident that occurred on a British Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner at Heathrow Airport on a rainy day in June 2021.<\/p>\n
The aircraft was undergoing the same maintenance procedure in which the landing gear would be cycled, but locking pins would be inserted to stop the gears from retracting. <\/p>\n
The engineer tasked with this job had never inserted the pin before and accidentally inserted it into an adjacent hole that did not lock the landing gear into place. Accident investigators later determined that the two holes appeared very similar and were not clearly marked.<\/p>\n
The initial suspicion following the Lufthansa accident was that an engineer had made the same mistake, although Boeing had made changes to the design of the locking pin hole to ensure that it wasn\u2019t mistaken with the adjacent hole.<\/p>\n
For now, the BFU isn\u2019t drawing any conclusions as to the cause of the accident. Today\u2019s preliminary report is simply a factual rundown of what occurred and what has been found so far. <\/p>\n
It could take many months before a final report is issued, at which point, the BFU may issue recommendations to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.<\/p>\n
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\t Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since… most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt’s industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/cef9cb1579594cfd078520dbe0869fd066e56d5e439461f889f15c2dbeaa5417.png\")
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