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A British Airways plane carrying 76 passengers suffered a major electrical failure just after taking off, an official accident report said. In what accident investigators described as "a serious incident", the Airbus A319 lost a number of important systems having just left Heathrow for Budapest. The crew reported an audible "clunk" and the flight deck suddenly became very dark as the aircraft was approaching 20,000ft, said the report from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

Federal air-safety watchdogs, criticizing years of delays in fixing hazardous cockpit windshields that have caused electrical fires on at least nine Boeing Co. passenger jets since 2004, issued a strongly worded letter urging swift action by the Federal Aviation Administration to eliminate the problem.