Another Air India flight suffers technical snag, passengers deplaned in Kolkata

Another Air India flight, this time from San Francisco to Mumbai via Kolkata, suffered a technical snag in one of its engines, forcing passengers to deplane during the scheduled halt in the West Bengal city early on Tuesday.

Flight AI180, a Boeing 777-200LR, landed in Kolkata at 12.45 am and was scheduled to depart for Mumbai at 2 am. However, during its scheduled halt, a technical snag was detected in the aircraft's left engine, delaying its onward journey. Around 5.20 am, an announcement was made on board asking all passengers to deplane.

The aircraft's captain informed the flyers that the step was being taken "in the interest of flight safety". Visuals from Kolkata airport showed the aircraft grounded on the tarmac, with airline personnel inspecting the faulty engine.

The incident added to growing safety concerns around wide-body aircraft after a series of similar events in the past few days.

On Monday morning, an Air India Dreamliner (AI315), flying from Hong Kong to Delhi, returned mid-air due to a suspected technical issue. The aircraft was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner — the same model involved in the recent Air India Flight 171 crash near Ahmedabad that killed over 270 people.

In a separate incident, a British Airways flight (BA35) bound for Chennai was forced to return to London Heathrow after a technical fault. The flight, which also operated on a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, had remained airborne for nearly two hours before it turned back.

In view of the recent technical glitches and the deadly Ahmedabad plane crash, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has directed Air India to carry out additional maintenance action on all its Boeing aircraft.

Officials said the safety directive mandated a series of checks, including fuel parameter monitoring, diagnostics of critical systems, inspection of the cabin air compressor and related components, electronic engine control testing, and a review of take-off thrust and performance metrics.

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