Air India grounds flight after detecting punctured tyre
Around 150 passengers on board an Air India (AI 075) Delhi-Bhubaneswar flight had a miraculous escape after one of the rear tyres of a wheel got punctured while landing at the Biju Patnaik International Airport here on Wednesday afternoon. All the passengers are safe, airport sources said.
The aircraft was grounded as it was unable to take off for the return flight to Delhi, which was scheduled at 2.15 pm. “The technical crew detected the puncture in the tyre during routine inspection before the return flight. It may have happened during landing but the technical team found it minutes before preparing to leave the airport,” airport director R Mahalingam told TOI. Soon after the snag was detected, the Delhi-bound passengers were off loaded.
“It was not an emergency landing as the problem didn’t cause landing difficulties,” said the director.
Sources said neither the pilots, other cabin crew and passengers got inkling of the tyre being punctured on the runway.
Air India sources said since it required replacement of the punctured tyre, the passengers were asked to wait till another special flight come and the tyre is replaced.
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“We have given two options to the passengers. Around 50 of them (those who don’t want to delay their travel) will leave for Delhi in our scheduled flight at 9.25 pm. Remaining passengers will go in the same flight after replacement of the tyre. This is expected to leave at around 10 pm,” said Air India station manager Tapas Ray. The ground staff and engineers are working to fix the problem, he added.
The carrier provided accommodation to the stranded passengers in two hotels. “We will inform the passengers two hours before takeoff of the Delhi-bound flight,” Ray said.
On May 18, the Air India’s Kolkata-Chennai flight had made emergency landing here, half an hour after it took off from Kolkata. The flight’s one of the engines developed technical snag forcing the pilots to contact Air Traffic Control for emergency landing.
