NEW DELHI: Around 250 passengers on a Delhi-bound Air India flight coming from Frankfurt had a close shave on Wednesday morning after its windshield cracked midair and the flight had to be diverted to Iran’s capital Tehran. The plane, an Air India 787 Dreamliner, had 249 passengers onboard and was scheduled to reach Delhi at 8.30am on Wednesday. An Air India spokesperson denied that the flight was forced to make an “emergency landing” and instead called it a “precautionary landing”. Sources told the Express that the problem could have been serious as the windshield cracked because of malfunctioning of the internal heating system.
A relief flight, a Boeing 747, was sent to Tehran to bring the passengers to Delhi and a team of engineers was also sent there to bring the damaged flight back to India. “The left cockpit --main window in front of the pilot-- developed cracks. Had the crack appeared somewhere else and had it did not get noticed immediately, it could have been dangerous,” said an airline official, who did not wish to be named. An airline spokesperson Dhananjay Kumar said, “The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has now been grounded and a relief plane, a Boeing 747, was sent from Mumbai to ferry the passengers to Delhi.” Windshield cracks happen due to uneven heating or something hitting the same. An aviation expert said that the problem of windshields cracking has particularly been a problem with dreamliners. In 2014, many incidents of windshields cracks were reported in dreamliner planes and following such incidents, the civil aviation ministry gave a detailed in the Parliament. Boeing made some changes in windshields that were brought in as replacements for cracked ones.
The ministry, had then said, “The on-going investigation by Boeing indicates that moisture ingress has resulted in an increased rate of occurrence (of windshield cracks). A new window design with improved features is in progress to reduce such incidents. The occurrences experienced on the airplanes were cracking of the non-structural outer glass ply, which does not affect the safety of the airplane due to the windshield’s ‘fail safe’ (multiple-layer) construction. AI has taken up the issue with Boeing, who have informed that old windshields shall be replaced by new windshields with improved design features.”