On Friday, May 20, a Tata Group-run Air India Airbus A320 Neo airliner decided to return to Mumbai airport precisely 27 minutes after takeoff after one of its engines stop working mid-flight caused by mechanical issue, according to sources.
A DGCA official said in a statement that “Air India Mumbai-Bengaluru flight AI-639 was involved in an air turn back after engine number 2 had an inflight shutdown (IFSD) due to an engine stall and some other snags.” The passengers taken to Bengaluru following switch of aircraft on Thursday, according to an Air India representative.
According to sources, the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), is investigating the incident. Air India’s A320 Neo planes equipped with CFM Leap engines, as opposed to IndiGo and GoAir’s Pratt and Whitney (PW) A320 Neo engines, which experienced technical issues. Merely minutes after taking off from Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at 9.43 a.m., the pilots of the A320neo plane received a notice about high exhaust gas temperatures on one of the engines.
When questioned about the situation, a spokesperson for Air India said: “Air India accords top priority to safety and our crew are well adept at handling these situations. Our Engineering and Maintenance teams had immediately started looking into the issue.”
“The scheduled flight had left with passengers to Bengaluru after a change of aircraft,” the spokesperson added.
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Image Credit: Sachin Gnath , Wikimedia Commons
