At 12:45 on Thursday afternoon, a brand-new Boeing 787-9 stood at stand A15 of Frankfurt Airport, being readied for the long haul to Los Angeles. Catering was going aboard, the cabin crew were at their stations — and then, without warning, the nose of the 250-tonne Dreamliner dropped to the concrete.

The nose landing gear of Lufthansa’s D-ABPQ, a jet delivered from Boeing only in January, had collapsed — or in the airline’s careful phrasing, “unexpectedly retracted” — while the aircraft was parked at the gate. Video of the moment shows the gear rolling forward before the nose slams down, a ground worker scrambling backwards to get clear.

No passengers had boarded. But the aircraft was not empty: cabin crew and ground staff were inside and around the jet, and several of them were hurt.

A Four-Month-Old Jet on Its Nose

D-ABPQ is one of the youngest aircraft in the Lufthansa fleet — one of 16 in-service 787-9s and a centrepiece of the airline’s widebody renewal. It entered long-haul service in February and had logged roughly 137 flights before Thursday. For a jet that new to end up resting on its radome at Germany’s busiest airport is, to put it mildly, not what Frankfurt expected to see over lunch.

Flight tracking specialists at Flightradar24 were among the first to confirm the identity of the aircraft and the extent of the damage.

The drop of several metres drove the nose section into the apron, and the airline describes the damage as significant. The aircraft was expected to be lifted and moved to a maintenance hangar in the evening, pending approval from the investigating authorities, before specialists determine whether — and how quickly — the jet can be repaired.

Lufthansa’s statement was brief and to the point.

Crew On Board, People Underneath

The injury list underlines how dangerous a gate can be when something this heavy lets go. Two Lufthansa cabin crew members, already on board preparing the cabin, and several employees of ground-handling companies working around the jet were taken to hospital for evaluation and treatment. All injuries are reported as minor — a fortunate outcome, given the video shows a worker standing metres from the nose as it came down.

The afternoon’s LH450 to Los Angeles was cancelled, with passengers rebooked onto other services. Fire and rescue vehicles ringed the aircraft for hours while investigators documented the scene.

What Investigators Will Look At

Nose gear collapses on parked aircraft are rare, and the causes tend to fall into two buckets: a mechanical or hydraulic failure within the gear and its locking mechanism, or a maintenance and handling error — for instance, gear pins and bypass procedures during servicing. Lufthansa says it is investigating the exact circumstances together with the relevant authorities; Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU) routinely reviews serious occurrences of this kind.

For Boeing, the timing is uncomfortable: a near-new Dreamliner on its nose makes global headlines regardless of where the fault ultimately lies. For Lufthansa, the question is more practical — how long one of its newest long-haul jets will sit in a hangar, and what 137 flights of service followed by a multi-metre nose drop means for the airframe.

Until the investigation reports, the only certainty is the picture itself: a four-month-old Dreamliner, kneeling at gate A15.

Sources: Lufthansa, Flightradar24, Associated Press, Bloomberg, AirlineGeeks