NEW DELHI: An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner has been grounded after the pilot on Monday flagged a possible defect with its fuel control switch.
Sources told TNIE that the flight itself had been routine and uneventful, with nothing experientially out of the ordinary.
According to sources, Flight AI132, carrying more than 250 passengers, operated normally from take-off at Heathrow Airport to its landing at Kempegowda International Airport.
After landing, the pilots taxied the widebody aircraft to the parking bay and parked it.
During routine post-landing checks, carried out as part of standard operating procedure, one of the pilots detected a fault in a fuel control switch and reported the issue.
The flight took off from London at 9:19 pm on February 1, local time (2.40 am on February 2 IST), and reached Bengaluru on Monday at around noon.
Confirming the incident, an Air India spokesperson said in a statement, "We are aware that one of our pilots has reported a possible defect on the fuel control switch of a Boeing 787-8 aircraft.”
The statement further said that the aircraft was grounded following the initial information.
“After receiving this initial information, we have grounded the said aircraft and are involving the OEM to get the pilot’s concerns checked on a priority basis.”
The aviation regulator, DGCA, has been alerted about the incident.
The incident comes against the backdrop of concerns in certain quarters about the functioning of the fuel control switch in the ill-fated Air India Dreamliner that crashed in June last year, following which DGCA had ordered checks of fuel control switches on all Boeing aircraft.
"Air India had checked the fuel control switches on all Boeing 787 aircraft in its fleet after a directive from the DGCA, and had found no issues. At Air India, the safety of our passengers and crew remains top priority,” the statement further read.
(With inputs from Express News Service)