Mumbai: An Air India flight from Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu to Dubai hit the airport’s boundary wall while taking off in the wee hours on Friday.
The pilots, however, were unaware of the hit. They flew the plane for a few hours till the airport ground staff reported to them about it. Around five feet of the wall had been damaged and parts such as antenna were found on the airport ground. The flight, with 130 passengers on board, was then diverted to Mumbai where it made an emergency landing at around 5.40 am, around four hours after takeoff.
The pilot of the flight, Captain D. Ganesh Babu, has a flying experience of 3,600 hours on Boeing 737 including 500 hours as a commander. He, along with the co-pilot, Captain Anurag have been de-rostered by Air India, pending investigation.
However, an Air India official said that the plane was working normally and it was diverted to Mumbai only as ‘a precautionary measure’.
The passengers have been flown to Dubai in another aircraft.
Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu has raised the issue that a third-party professional organisation is required to monitor various safety aspects at Air India. He has also ordered a regular ‘safety compliance report’ of all airlines, adding that growth can’t be at the expense of safety.
An Air India flight from Dubai had overrun the runway while landing at the Mangalore airport in May 2010, killing 150 people. Sixteen passengers had survived.
