Air India has cancelled six international flights using the 787-8 Dreamliner due to scrutiny following a crash last week in Ahmedabad.
Flights AI 915 (Delhi-Dubai), AI 153 (Delhi-Vienna), AI 143 (Delhi-Paris), AI 159 (Ahmedabad-London), AI 133 (Bengaluru-London), and AI 170 (London-Amritsar) were cancelled. Additionally, AI 315 to Delhi had to return to Hong Kong due to a technical issue.
An Air India flight to Mumbai had to deboard passengers on a San Francisco-bound service due to a technical snag.
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Two Dreamliners operated by Lufthansa and British Airways also returned to their origine airports. Air India informed AFP that flight AI 143 had a pre-flight issue requiring time to resolve, violating night flight restrictions at Charles de Gaulle-Paris. The airline cancelled day services between Ahmedabad and London Gatwick due to airspace constraints and extra safety checks, acknowledging no technical issue with the aircraft.
Cancellations and mid-air turnbacks have increased, raising concerns since the June 12 crash of Air India flight AI 171, which went down shortly after takeoff, resulting in 241 fatalities. The sole survivor, a British-Indian, occupied seat 11a. Reports indicated at least 33 deaths, marking this as a major aviation disaster in India.
To honour those who died, Air India retired the flight’s callsign. Investigation and analysis of the AI 171 recordings will take time, with experts suggesting it may take months to explain the crash satisfactorily. Preliminary video analysis indicates that the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed, which occurs during dual-engine or system failures. However, the cause of the failure remains unclear.
Air India operates 33 Boeing 787s, while competitor IndiGo has one, per Flightradar24.
