Ahmedabad: In a close shave for a Mumbai-
bound GoAir flight, the plane with over 130 onboard suffered a
bird hit that damaged one its blades soon after it took-off
from the city airport on Saturday, forcing it to return.
All 131 passengers are safe after the aircraft landed
under emergency conditions here and the plane has been
grounded.
"One blade of the aircraft, which was operating on
Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Bangalore route has been confirmed as damaged
due to the impact and the flight has been grounded," a GoAir
official said.
The passengers are being transferred to other
airlines, the official said, adding, "we have cancelled our
next flight".
The official, however, did not specify the number of
crew members on board.
The flight had taken off for Mumbai at 6.15 pm and
returned to Ahmedabad shortly after the bird hit the aircraft,
the official said.
The incident adds to a string of close calls for
various flights. On June 16, an Air India plane from Mumbai to
Delhi with 140 passengers and six crew members suffered a bird
hit while landing at the city airport, a day after two tyres
of the same aircraft were found deflated on landing at Delhi.
On June 21, over 160 people onboard an IndiGo flight
from Delhi had a narrow escape when one of the tyres of the
aircraft burst while landing at Srinagar airport.
Earlier this month, an Air India Express Dubai-Pune
flight with 112 passengers on board, dropped several thousand
feet over Muscat air space after hitting an air pocket, giving
anxious moments to those on board.
About a week later, a mid-air collision was averted by
pilots as a Jet Airways and an Air India plane came
`dangerously close` on the same flight path over Tamil Nadu.
Air India flight IC 671 and Jet Airways flight 9W
4758, carrying nearly 250 passengers and crew, came close to
colliding with each other at a height of 17,000 feet near
Trichchirapalli air space, triggering an Air Traffic Collision
Avoidance siren in both the planes.
On June 3, a possible disaster was averted at Mumbai`s
Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport when a flight was
cleared for landing while another plane was waiting for
take-off on the same runway.
A Chennai-bound Spicejet flight with 201 passengers
was cleared for take-off shortly after 1.30 am but the
flight commander detected some technical problem and
informed the air traffic control.
At the same time, the ATC had already cleared for
landing a Kingfisher Airlines flight arriving from New Delhi.
The Kingfisher flight too had some 200 passengers on board.
On May 22, an Air India Express aircraft had overshot
the runway at Mangalore airport and crashed into a ravine
killing 158 passengers, the worst air disaster in a decade.
PTI
