Ground handling equipment has seriously damaged an airliner belonging to British Airways at the Boryspil airport, several sources have told avianews.com.

According to one of the sources, the ground handling of the airliner was performed by the Interavia company, which is under the control of Ukraine International Airlines and was formerly known as Swissport.

"A decent hole was made in in the lining of the right wing. It seems that the power set was also damaged. Visually, the damage has a length of about one meter," said another source, who saw the damage.

According to him, repair of such a damage can take quite a long time if the carrier decides to perform the repair in Boryspil by sending repair specialists to the airport.

The incident occurred on January 7, but it was not reported officially. The British Airways’ return flight from Kiev to London on that day was canceled. The airline company sent a more capacious Boeing 767 to Kiev the next day to pick up the passengers of both flights, according to Flightradar24.

According to the online flight tracker, the damaged airliner is an Airbus 319 with the tail number G-EUPP. This airplane performed a London-Kiev flight on 7 January.