Turbulence, radar glitch, and aborted landing: Air India flight’s 2.5-hour mid-air ordeal

Weather turbulence, a suspected malfunction in the weather radar, 90 minutes of circling over an alternative airport and an aborted landing. Congress MP K.C. Venugopal and several other Parliamentarians were among over 100 passengers on an Air India Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi flight late on Sunday night that saw a series of nerve-racking moments.

“Shortly after take-off, we were hit by unprecedented turbulence. About an hour later, the Captain announced a flight signal fault and diverted to Chennai. For nearly two hours, we circled the airport awaiting clearance to land, until a heart-stopping moment during our first attempt – another aircraft was reportedly on the same runway,” Mr. Venugopal wrote on X about his AI 2455 flight. The aircraft landed safely in the second attempt.

The DGCA responded with a detailed statement and rejected the claim that landing was aborted because of another aircraft on the runway.

The MP added that they were saved by “skill and luck” and called for the DGCA to investigate the matter.

Flight tracking website Flightradar 24 showed that the aircraft took off from Thiruvananthapuram at 8.17 p.m. after a delay of nearly an hour. En route, it was diverted to Chennai, where it circled over the airport for 90 minutes.

According to the DGCA statement, the aircraft’s departure from Thiruvananthapuram was delayed due to late arrival of the aircraft from Delhi because of poor weather. The aircraft encountered moderate turbulence and orbited over Chennai airport to burn extra fuel before attempting a landing. In the interim, pilots suspected a weather radar malfunction. However, as it was approaching the runway, it was instructed by the air traffic control tower to abort landing because a previous flight had reported suspected debris on the runway.

The DGCA statement further said that an inspection of the runway didn’t find anything untoward and thereafter the aircraft was given clearance for landing. A safe landing was carried out the second time at 10.39 p.m.

It also said that Air India’s engineering team found no deficiency in the weather radar, but as a precautionary measure, replaced its transreceiver.

Air India said in a statement that all the affected passengers were accommodated on alternative flights to Delhi and the aircraft involved in the incident had also resumed commercial operations.