Air India has cancelled five international flights on Tuesday, all were scheduled to be operated by Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners. The decision was taken after growing safety concerns after the Ahmedabad plane crash that happened last week’s tragic crash with the same aircraft.
Dreamliner Problems Hit Dozens Of Flights
The cancelled flights are AI 915 from Delhi to Dubai, AI 153 to Vienna, AI 143 to Paris, AI 159 from Ahmedabad to London, and AI 170 from London to Amritsar.
It did not stop there. One of its Dreamliner flights AI 315 had to be brought back to Hong Kong after a mid-air technical malfunction.
Earlier in the day, a San Francisco-Mumbai Air India flight faced an issue when it made a scheduled stopover at Kolkata. For precautionary measures, all the passengers on flight were asked to disembark.
Aside from that, two British Airways and Lufthansa Dreamliners from Frankfurt and London to Chennai and Hyderabad were forced to be turned back mid-air due to issues.
Flight Inspection and Last-Minute Issues
There was a technical problem in the Delhi-Paris flight (AI 143) during pre-flight inspection, the airline reported. It would take so long to repair that the plane would have lost its allowed flying time at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, and thus it was cancelled.
There was no technical issue in AI 159 Ahmedabad-London flight, but the flight could not be flown due to airspace restrictions and some other safety checks being carried out as a precautionary measure.
Impacts of the June 12 Crash The rise in Dreamliner crashes just a few days after the disastrous crash of Air India’s AI 171 is alarming. The aircraft was flying to London from Ahmedabad when it crashed after just 40 seconds of flight.
The aircraft crashed into a college hostel a mere 2 km from the airport and exploded into a massive fireball. Only a single British-Indian passenger sitting in seat 11A survived among 242 on board. At least 33 on the ground were killed as well.
Air India then retired AI 171 callsign to honour the victims of what is now one of the country’s worst air disasters.
Probes Ongoing as Navy Schedules Fleet Inspections
The flight’s voice and data recorders have been found and are being examined, but aviation authorities say that it is only possible to know what actually occurred after months.
Initial inspection of the crash video indicates that the RAT had extended – something that happens only when both engines or critical systems like hydraulics or electronics fail completely.
What exactly caused that failure is still unknown.
Air India currently operates 33 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, reports Reuters. That is in contrast to a solitary one in the IndiGo fleet, flight tracking data from Flightradar24 says.
Concurrently, India’s aviation watchdog DGCA instructed a thorough check of all Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 aircraft fitted with GEnx engines. This includes close examination of engine performance during takeoff, fuel systems, and electronic engine control units.
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