RAIPUR: It’s been over nine years for a Bangladesh-based United Airways plane that made an emergency landing at Raipur and the airport authorities apparently seems perplexed as they didn’t receive any feedback to their series of high-priority communication sent to officials of the private carrier and the neighbouring country that now seems in turmoil.
“Forget its take-off from the Chhattisgarh capital, the plane has virtually turned as a huge scrap not fit to fly. During all these years, we haven’t received any concrete response or information from Bangladesh regarding the parked aircraft here”, a senior officer of Airport Authority of India (AAI) Regional Headquarter told this newspaper.
The parking charges to be paid by the private carrier keep piling up. “The parking fee is Rs 320 per hour. And the charges for the Bangladesh plane have already touched Rs 4 crore”, he added.
The United Airways flight with 173 passengers on board on its way from Dhaka to Muscat made an emergency landing at Swami Vivekananda airport in Raipur on 7 August 2015 following a technical snag and failure of one of its engines.
The plane took off from Dhaka and as it entered the Varanasi-Raipur airspace, the operating crew reported low engine pressure, which was followed by a massive explosion.
“We were at 32,000 feet when a part of the engine caught fire and broke off. We could hear the sound, the vibration, the swing as the aircraft descended. We were lucky to have an engineer on board that day,” Captain Shahbaz Imtiaz Khan, the pilot on the United Airways flight, had said.
The aircraft engineering team from Bangladesh fixed the problem three years later, tested the plane and made it into a flight-ready condition. But later no action was initiated to expedite the process by the officials who were contacted in Bangladesh for the aircraft to be flown back to Dhaka.
The airport officials here are evidently clueless on what recourse the AAI or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation might initiate.
“Nobody in AAI ever thought that if a plane from any foreign country is left behind in India for long, what rules should then be applied to address such a situation. There is no regulation existing. The AAI and the DGCA (a regulatory body in civil aviation) are likely to take decisions at the policy level regarding the fate of the Bangladesh plane parked in Raipur”, the officer stated.
The company that operated the grounded Bangladesh plane has shut down its flight services. The parked plane is not affecting the routine operations in the Raipur airport.
Parking charges mounted to Rs 4 crore
The parking charges to be paid by the private carrier keep piling up. “The parking fee is Rs 320 per hour. And the charges for the Bangladesh plane have already touched Rs 4 crore”, a senior officer of Airport Authority of India (AAI) Regional Headquarter added.