NEW DELHI: Aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday said that the cockpit crew of the Delhi-bound Air India flight from Thiruvananthapuram was directed by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) at Chennai to give a miss to the first landing it had planned on the runway.
This followed a message relayed to them by the pilots of an earlier departing flight about debris being present near the runway.
In a statement, the regulator also said the pilots of AI 2455 thought that the weather radar inside the cockpit had malfunctioned and was giving inaccurate information and this made them take the decision to divert the flight to Chennai. Later, a component in the nose cone of the aircraft, WX radar transceiver, which feeds inputs to the weather radar, was replaced as a precautionary measure before the flight finally took off from Chennai to Delhi.
Flight AI2455 with 178 passengers, including five MPs from Kerala, plus seven crew members, had an emergency landing at Chennai airport on Sunday night due to turbulent weather and a suspected technical issue in the aircraft. AICC General Secretary and MP K C Venugopal, who was seated inside the flight, later billed the whole issue as a “harrowing experience” in a long post on X.
He alleged that the aircraft was frighteningly close to tragedy as it was ”a heart-stopping moment” during the first landing attempt.
“Another aircraft was reportedly on the same runway. In that split second, the Captain’s quick decision to pull up saved every life. We were saved by skill and luck. Passenger safety cannot depend on luck.”
Venugopal’s remark was immediately countered by Air India on X which denied any danger posed by any other aircraft. “The go-around was instructed by the Chennai ATC during the first attempted landing at the airport. It was not because of the presence of another aircraft on the runway.”
The DGCA’s statement gave minute details about the incident. It said that the A320 aircraft took off from Thiruvananthapuram only at 8.04 pm instead of its scheduled time of 7.15 pm. The delay of 49 minutes was due to the delayed arrival of the aircraft arriving here from Delhi.
“During the flight, the aircraft encountered moderate turbulent conditions. The crew observed that the weather information depicted on the weather radar was not accurate and suspecting a radar malfunction, the flight was diverted to Chennai,” the regulator said.
The aircraft moved away from the path to a nearby area to burn some fuel and avoid an overweight landing, it said. “The aircraft with the ATC clearance orbited 25 NM (nautical miles) northeast of Chennai for 43 minutes, from 9.25 pm to 10.08 pm,” it said.
“After the aircraft was cleared for approach Runway 25 at Chennai at 10.19 pm, the aircraft was instructed to carry out a missed approach by the ATC as the departing Gulf Air flight GFA053 (Chennai-Bahrain) reported debris on the left side of the runway.
An aviation expert said the presence of debris in any form (stones or even aircraft parts) was a dangerous situation as it could get into the engine of the flight and cause operational issues.
The DGCA added that the apron control (ground control) staff then carried out an inspection of the runway but could not spot any debris. The aircraft was given landing clearance and the aircraft landed safely at 10.39 pm, it said.
During engineering inspection by the DGCA, no deficiency was observed in the aircraft. “As a precautionary measure, the WX radar transceiver was replaced with a serviceable one,” the release added.
The transceiver receives the weather signals, interprets it and feeds it to the the radar inside the cockpit, which is then displayed in the Navigation Display panel, the expert explained,
An Air India source added the pilots had the option of landing in Bengaluru or Chennai but due to clear weather conditions at the latter, they decided to land there.