Earlier today, casually looking through Twitter, I happened to see and retweet a Singapore Airlines A330 that was either kneeling out of respect, or had a rough night at Singapore’s Changi airport.

Since you clear security at the gate in Singapore, they’d thought they’d show some deference and kneel for the pax. https://t.co/VfnVkPbTyu

— Trevor (@tmount) October 11, 2015

It’s always interesting to see what more there is to the story.

Via Avherald the incident happened about an hour before boarding, as a mechanic was on board doing a maintenance check on the landing gear. It’s not yet clear whether the landing gear retracted as part of those maintenance checks, but based on the comments on the above linked post, there are some checks that do require one to select “retract the landing gear” on the ground, but, pins that are put in place, prevent the gear from actually retracting. The result of the incident was not only the A330 with putting its nose to the tarmac (or grindstone perhaps?), but also ripping off door 1L. Here are some photos, all courtesy of AvHerald:

Courtesy of AvHerald

Courtesy of AvHerald