Delhi-bound Air India plane lands due to glitch in Iran

New Delhi: It was a day of unforeseen circumstances for the national carrier, Air India. An Air India flight, flying in from German city of Frankfurt and heading for New Delhi, made a precautionary landing enroute at the Iranian capital, Tehran, following a technical glitch. 

The aircraft that faced technical issue was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Notably, Air India has had technical problems with its Dreamliner fleet in the past too. The national carrier despatched a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet as a replacement aircraft to fly the passengers to Delhi. It also had engineers on board. 

In the second incident, the wing of a parked Ethiopian airline aircraft that was being “pushed back” at the New Delhi IGI airport near T3 terminal collided with a wing of a parked Air India aircraft. About the first incident, an Air India official said, “AI 120 flight Frankfurt-Delhi made a precautionary landing in Tehran due to technical reasons at 6.20 am local time. All the 249 passengers were transferred to a hotel there. The grounded flight is a 787 (Dreamliner). A relief flight, i.e. 747 aircraft, departed from Mumbai to Tehran. A team of engineers and other technical staff also boarded the relief flight. The relief flight will return to New Delhi with all passengers while engineers and other technical staff will come back to Mumbai after maintenance work on the grounded aircraft.”

About the second incident, an AI official said that at the New Delhi airport, near T-3 terminal, “an Ethiopian airline aircraft and an Air India aircraft” were parked and that “around 2 am” the Ethiopian aircraft “push-backed”. 

The Air India official added, “During the push-back, the right wing of the Ethiopian aircraft hit the left wing of Air India aircraft.”

The Air India plane has been grounded temporarily and the national carrier will be claiming damages from the Ethiopian airlines. 

The Ethiopian airlines issued a statement, saying, “On August 9, 2017, our B-767 aircraft, registration number ET-AMG, preparing for a regular Delhi-Addis Ababa bound flight, number ET687 , had a minor ground incident of wing tip collision with Air India A320 aircraft during push-back at the IGI Airport. 

The necessary repair work is being conducted on the aircraft as per our safety and maintenance procedures. As always, safety and comfort of our customers is our first priority and we flew a substitute aircraft to continue the flight service for our valued customers. We would like to apologise to our passengers on the flight for the inconvenience caused.”