Pilots of the Air India Express flight from Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu to Dubai continued to fly for more than four hours even after the wheels of the plane hit the airport’s outer wall while taking off early on Friday.
They were unaware of the extent of the damage to the plane in the accident and continued to fly until the airport staff informed them.
Flight IX-611, which had taken off at around 1.20am with 130 passengers and six crew members, was diverted to Mumbai where it made a safe emergency landing at around 5.40am.
Captain D Ganesh Babu, who has flying experience of 3,600 hours on Boeing 737 including 500 hours as commander, was informed of the incident by the ground staff at Trichy.
An Air India official he reported that the aircraft system was operating normally but diverted the flight to Mumbai as “a precautionary measure”.
“But we found some parts of the plane like an antenna on the ground,” Trichy airport director K Gunasekaran said, according to news agency IANS. Gunasekaran said the plane had hit the airport’s instrument landing systems.
A portion of the nearly five-foot tall compound wall at the Tiruchirappalli airport was also damaged, an airport official told IANS. Tamil Nadu’s tourism minister N Natarajan visited the airport and inspected the damage.
“The total length of the runway is 8,200 feet. The takeoff point would vary depending on the type of aircraft,” he said. Queried about the load carried by the plane and its capacity, he said the details were being collected. Once the Boeing B737-800 landed in Mumbai, the passengers were flown to Dubai in another plane with a fresh set of crew.
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