An Air India flight coming from Hyderabad made an emergency landing at Mumbai International Airport Terminal 2 at around 7.30am on Monday after the pilot noticed smoke in the undercarriage.
An Air India flight coming from Hyderabad made an emergency landing at Mumbai International Airport Terminal 2 at around 7.30am on Monday after the pilot noticed smoke in the undercarriage.
Airline sources said as many as 120 passengers were on board, and they were evacuated safely using chutes. This is the third such incident in a row at Mumbai airport and the second such in an Air India aircraft. Following the incident, airport authorities were forced to shut the main runway and flights were operated from the secondary runway. A probe was ordered by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, (DGCA).
Flight number AI 620 (an Airbus 319 aircraft) took off from Hyderabad at about 6.15 am. Airline sources said airline officials suspected that the repair work that the aircraft underwent on Sunday night was not done properly, which led to the incident at Mumbai airport. Sources said that when the aircraft was about to land on the main runway at around 7.30am, the pilot noticed black smoke coming from the drum of the aircraft wheel and informed the Air Traffic Control Centre. Soon after, a complete emergency situation was declared at the airport and fire-fighting systems were deployed.
Passengers were in the arrival hall by 9 am and according to airport sources, they informed ground staff that none of them were injured and they came to know about the smoke only after being de-boarded. An engineer on condition of anonymity informed The Asian Age that owing to regular work, the drum of the wheel turned warm and when fuel came in contact with the warm part, black smoke started emanating.
Air India sources said the aircraft is over 20 years old as AI acquired the Classic type of A320 planes between 1989 and 1993, and still has 15 such aircraft. These aircraft do not have censors to measure air pressure and due to non-availability of censors, it becomes difficult to know the pressure.
Earlier on March 15, an Air India aircraft — Airbus A320 with over 150 passengers on board, suffered a tyre-burst while taxiing after it landed at Mumbai airport from Nagpur. On March 3, as many as 127 passengers on board a Jet Airways aircraft from New Delhi had a close shave after its main landing gear collapsed when it landed in Mumbai.
