JOIN USBoeing’s Dreamliners continue to give Air India the jitters. The latest being two planes headed to Birmingham and Sydney from Delhi on Thursday that had to be grounded following reports of serious faults just before take-off.
Both the planes were to take off in a span of 10 minutes but the flights had to be aborted following technical problems. They were replaced with new planes, leading to a delay that inconvenienced flyers.
On Thursday afternoon, the Dreamliner to Sydney with 246 people on board was grounded after pilots suspected a snag in the engine.
Though a separate aircraft was arranged, the flight took off three hours behind schedule. In the second case, the flight to Birmingham with 126 passengers on board experienced trouble when it was taxiing for take-off.
The crew found that one of the doors had not shut properly and the aircraft returned to the bay. Efforts made by engineers to close the door failed, sources said.
Passengers were then deplaned and another aircraft was arranged, with a delay of about 90 minutes. Last week, two Air India Dreamliners — one to Moscow operations and the other to Singapore, faced technical problems almost simultaneously.
Since its inaugural flight in September last year, the Dreamliner fleet is giving problems to Air India. The government admitted in Parliament that there were 318 instances of technical snags in Dreamliners between September 18 and June this year.
“Out of 9,902 take-offs, 318 instances of service delays attributed to technical snags have been reported,” Civil Aviation Minister informed Lok Sabha on July 14.