Pilots urge grounding of all Boeing 787s in India after UK flight’s emergency power device deploys mid-air – UK Times

India’s largest pilots’ union has urged regulators to ground and inspect all Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft in the country after an Air India flight’s emergency power device unexpectedly activated mid-air.

The ram air turbine or RAT, a backup system that deploys automatically to provide emergency power during in-flight failures, dropped from the fuselage of flight AI117 en route to Birmingham, UK, on Saturday, even though the airline later confirmed that all systems were operating normally.

The Federation of Indian Pilots, representing some 6,000 pilots, called the incident “unprecedented” and warned that it could have signalled an electrical malfunction.

The union sent a letter to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation asking for a full inspection of all 34 Dreamliner aircraft in the country.

“I have never heard of the RAT being deployed automatically without any hydraulic loss, power loss or failures,” the association’s president, Charanvir Singh Randhawa, was quoted as saying by The New York Times.

The incident occurred on 4 October when flight AI117 from Amritsar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, was en route to Birmingham. The pilots of the 12-year-old Boeing 787-8 were alarmed when its RAT deployed during the approach to runway 33 even though the aircraft’s power systems and engines were working fine.

The aircraft landed safely but the return flight was cancelled as a precaution. It was cleared to fly again the next day on the Birmingham-Delhi route.

In a statement, Air India said the activation of the back-up engine was “neither due to a system fault nor pilot action”.

“The deployment of the RAT was ‘uncommanded’, consistent with similar occurrences with other airlines in the past, as reported by Boeing,” it said.

The airline said it had submitted a report to the industry regulator in line with protocols, adding: “At Air India, the safety of all passengers and crew remains our foremost priority.”

In response to a query from The Independent, Boeing said: “We’ll have to defer to the customer for comments.” The Independent has contacted Air India for comment.

This is the second notable incident involving a Boeing 787 in recent months. The crash of Air India flight 171 in June, which killed 260 people, occurred after the RAT deployed following a loss of power.

A preliminary investigation into the incident in June confirmed that the turbine deployed after the plane lost power, but officials are still working to determine the reason for the loss of power. The preliminary report noted that the Dreamliner’s fuel-control switches were moved from “run” to “cutoff” just before impact, cutting off fuel to both engines.

Air India, a Tata Group airline, said after the latest incident that the Birmingham flight landed safely on Saturday and an initial inspection showed “all electrical and hydraulic parameters were normal”.

“It is a serious concern that warrants a detailed inquiry,” Captain Randhawa said, according to the Associated Press.

Regulators are yet to say whether they will investigate the incident.

The Independent has reached out to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for comment.