Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has retimed its MH740/741 flights after the aircraft’s belly was hit by an airside vehicle at the KL International Airport (KLIA) today.

The B737-800 aircraft was scheduled to depart to Yangon (Flight MH740) at 10.05am but due to the incident, passengers were transferred to a different aircraft which took off at 10.45am the same day,  MAS said in a statement in Putrajaya.

The return flight (MH741) has been retimed to depart Yangon at 12.30pm, it said.

The airline said the driver of the vehicle which belongs to a vendor had been immediately reprimanded.

MAS operations director Captain Izham Ismail said their engineers were on site to assess the damage.

“The preliminary assessment showed no immediate risk to the structure of the aircraft. However the grounding of the aircraft was necessary to conduct a thorough check,” he said.

Izham reiterated that the safety of its passengers remained paramount to MAS.

Malaysia Airlines in the statement apologised to all passengers of MH740/741 on May 15 for the disruption to their travel plans.

- Bernama