An Air India flight en route from San Francisco to Mumbai was unexpectedly grounded in Kolkata during a scheduled stop, after a fault was discovered in the aircraft’s left engine. Passengers were asked to disembark in the early hours of Tuesday, with the onward journey facing significant delays.
The flight in question, AI180, operated using a Boeing 777-200LR, landed at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at approximately 12:45 am. It had been slated to depart for Mumbai around 2:00 am. However, a technical snag was identified during the routine halt, prompting the flight crew to announce at 5:20 am that all passengers would need to leave the aircraft “in the interest of flight safety”.
Images from the tarmac showed ground staff and engineers examining the problematic engine while the aircraft remained stationary. This incident adds to mounting apprehension surrounding the safety of wide-body jets, especially in light of recent technical failures.
Just a day earlier, on Monday morning, Air India flight AI315—a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner operating from Hong Kong to Delhi—was forced to return mid-flight due to a suspected fault. The same model was recently involved in the tragic crash of Air India Flight 171 near Ahmedabad, which resulted in the loss of over 270 lives. In a separate episode, a British Airways service (BA35) headed for Chennai had to return to London Heathrow after encountering a technical issue. The aircraft, also a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, had been in the air for nearly two hours before it turned back.
Given this string of malfunctions, and particularly in the aftermath of the fatal Ahmedabad crash, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a directive to Air India mandating intensified maintenance checks across its fleet of Boeing aircraft. The directive reportedly includes stringent inspections of engine diagnostics, fuel performance data, electronic control systems, cabin air compressors, and take-off thrust configurations, among other critical safety parameters.
With inputs from agencies
Image Source: Multiple agencies
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