Multiple Air India flights have been delayed, diverted, or cancelled in the past few days amid heightened safety checks ordered by India’s civil aviation authority.
This comes in the wake of the deadly Air India crash in Ahmedabad, which killed 241 people on board and more than 30 on the ground, and raised concerns over Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft operating in India.
An Air India flight from Delhi to Paris, AI143, was reportedly cancelled on Tuesday after mandatory pre-flight checks revealed an issue, the airline announced in a statement. As a result, the return flight, AI142 from Paris to Delhi scheduled for Wednesday, was also cancelled, NDTV reported.
However, Flightradar24 data shows that Air India flight AI142, from Paris to Delhi, has been cancelled for four consecutive days: from 14 June to 17.
Hours earlier on Tuesday, Air India flight AI-159 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick was cancelled due to “operational issues”, an airport official earlier said. However, a spokesperson for the airline later said that the cancellation was “due to the unavailability of the aircraft, resulting from airspace restrictions and additional precautionary checks, leading to longer than usual turnaround of aircraft”.
The Independent has reached out to Air India for comment.
Passengers scheduled to travel on the plane told ANI they received little information about the cause or compensation options. An AI-159 flight passenger told ANI: “I was going to Gatwick, London, by the 1pm Air India flight, but I have just learned that the flight has been cancelled. The crew members could not give any reason for the flight cancellation or details on a fare refund.”
An airport official was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India: “We have been informed that the flight has been cancelled due to operational issues. The original flight from Ahmedabad to London, having code AI-171, resumed operation from Monday with a new flight code AI-159.”
The plane was initially rescheduled to depart at 3pm from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad in the Indian state of Gujarat. But the Air India website later confirmed that the flight AI-159 to London Gatwick on Tuesday had been cancelled.
In a separate incident on Monday, Air India flight AI180 from San Francisco to Mumbai via Kolkata experienced a technical snag in its left engine after landing in Kolkata.
Passengers were asked to de-board for safety, and the delay extended over four hours.
Flight AI180 arrived at the Kolkata airport at 12.45am, when it faced a technical snag and passengers were asked to disembark.
On 16 June, another Air India plane, AI315, a Delhi-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, returned to Hong Kong shortly after takeoff due to a technical issue.
The plane had reached about 22,000ft before the pilot decided to turn back due to midair technical difficulties.
It landed safely around 3.20pm local time in Hong Kong, and passengers were accommodated with alternate travel plans.
“Due to technical reason we would like to stay closer to Hong Kong. May be, we will come back and land in Hong Kong once we sort out the problem. We don’t want to continue further,” the pilot was heard telling the ATC.
The Hong Kong-to-Delhi flight took off at approximately 9.30am IST but returned to the airport within 90 minutes, according to data from the flight tracking service Flightradar24.
These back-to-back technical issues have intensified scrutiny on Air India’s Dreamliner fleet, with aviation authorities urging immediate and thorough pre-flight inspections to ensure passenger safety.
On Saturday, civil aviation minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu said that from the nation’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), “we have also given an order to do an extended surveillance for the 787 planes. There are 34 in our Indian aircraft fleet today. I believe that eight have already been inspected and with immediate urgency, all of them are going to be done”.
DGCA announced on Friday that it has mandated maintenance checks on all of Air India’s Boeing 787-8 and 787-9 Dreamliners fitted with General Electric’s GEnx engines.
The two-week inspections will focus on the aircrafts’ fuel, cabin air, engine control, and hydraulic systems.
Air India has completed one-time inspections on nine of its Dreamliner aircraft, with 24 still remaining. The airline cautioned that some of these checks may increase turnaround times and could cause delays on select long-haul routes.
Meanwhile, Boeing Commercial Airplanes head, Stephanie Pope, reportedly met with Air India chairperson N Chandrasekaran in India on Monday to discuss the recent crash of the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
The meeting, held at Air India’s headquarters near New Delhi, was also attended by top executives from GE Aerospace, which supplied the aircraft’s engines, sources told Reuters.
Air India, one of Boeing’s largest customers, has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm, and over 200 new aircraft on order, including 20 additional 787s.
The Air India plane that crashed on Thursday was a nearly 10-year-old Boeing 787 Dreamliner with over 41,000 flight hours and around 8,000 takeoffs and landings, normal for its age. The crash came amid ongoing scrutiny of Boeing, which recently avoided criminal charges in a separate case involving two fatal 737 Max crashes.
Whistleblowers have voiced concerns about Boeing’s South Carolina facility in the US, where the Dreamliner has been assembled for years. One of the most prominent was John Barnett, a former quality manager with nearly 30 years at the company, who publicly spoke out in 2019 about what he described as unsafe manufacturing practices.
Barnett died reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot wound last year amid a prolonged legal battle with Boeing, alleging the company had retaliated against him for exposing these issues. Last month, Boeing reached a settlement with his family in connection with his death.
