Air India’s woes with the Boeing 787 aircraft in its fleet continued on Thursday with the Delhi-Kolkata flight returning to the capital after a suspected windshield crack.
The aircraft was over Lucknow when the captain suspected that the windshield had cracked and decided to turn back. Kolkata-bound passengers were transferred to another Air India aircraft and sent on their way a short while after they returned to Delhi.
This is not the first time that the airline has reported a windshield crack in the Boeing 787. There have been previous such incidents with AI’s Boeing 787 aircraft when they were on flights to the UK and Australia.
Meanwhile, a General Electric engineer is expected to reach Seoul on Friday to inspect both the engines on AI’s Boeing 787 aircraft which is stranded in the South Korean capital. The airline was forced to ground the flight in Seoul after the US aviation watchdog, the Federal Aviation Administration, asked all airlines to ground aircraft which are mounted with a particular series of a GE engine. The aircraft that AI was using to operate the Seoul flight had engines which were from the particular series which FAA wanted to check.
Airline sources said that the passengers who were to travel from Seoul to India had already been transferred to other airlines. The stranded aircraft will do a ferry flight, that is, return empty from South Korea except for the airline crew.
It is not unusual for a new aircraft, like the B 787 which entered commercial service for the first time in 2011, to face problems. The world’s largest commercial jet, the Airbus A-380, which has been produced by Boeing’s European competitor Airbus, also faced problems after it entered service in 2007.
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