What is happening with Indian airlines?
On Sunday, two more incidents involving Indian budget carrier airlines came to light which again questioned the aircraft safety and maintenance, after the increased frequency of such incidents in recent months.
The first incident happened on the night of Saturday, an IndiGo flight flying from Sharjah to Hyderabad had to make an emergency landing in Karachi after observing a technical malfunction in the aircraft. However, the airline sent another aircraft to fly the passengers to Hyderabad, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) ordered an investigation into the incident. This is the second such incident this month.
Before this incident, on July 5, a SpiceJet flight flying from Delhi to Dubai had to be diverted to Karachi, Pakistan after a suspected fuel leak. The incident prompted the DGCA to issue a show cause notice to Spicejet for at least eight such malfunction incidents in its aircraft since 19 June.
On the other hand, it was the second such incident for IndiGo after its Delhi-Vadodara flight was diverted to Jaipur on July 14 due to the vibrations in the engine of the aircraft.
Another Indian budget airline, Air India Express saw two malfunction incidents constantly for two days that are Friday and Saturday. The incidents came to light on Sunday. The DGCA ordered a probe into the matter involving the Air India Express flight flying from Bahrain to Kochi on July 15 in which a bird was found alive inside the cockpit of the aircraft when the plane was flying at a height of 37,000 feet.
Reports suggest that an engineer during pre-flight checks tried to get rid of the bird but failed after which he opened the flight deck window hoping that the bird would fly away. Then, he went out for some time. When the engineer didn’t notice the bird inside the cockpit, he assumed that the bird had flown away and gave a green signal to the aircraft to fly.
Meanwhile, after flying, the pilot observed the bird nestled near the glove compartment where flight manuals are kept but the bird didn’t attempt to fly. After the aircraft landed in Kochi, the bird was safely released.
On Saturday night, an Air India Express flight flying from Calicut to Dubai had to be diverted to Muscat after detecting a burning smell in the cabin from one of the vents in the forward galley. All these budget airline incidents are questioning the safety of passengers and maintenance of the aircraft. The DGCA has ordered an investigation into all the incidents.
