In the early hours of this morning, an Air India Boeing 777 bound for Mumbai had to make an emergency landing in Delhi due to engine trouble.
Information has been released pertinent to the incident at hand.
Below is what we know on this incident so far.
Air India Flight AI887 Mumbai-Delhi…
Air India flight AI887, which made the emergency landing, is a routine scheduled flight between Delhi and Mumbai.
Furthermore, the aircraft involved in the incident was VT-ALS.
As per data from Planespotters.net, VT-ALS is a 15.7 year old Boeing 777-300ER that was delivered to the airline back in April 2010.
Of the Boeing 777-300ER variant, Air India has 19 of them.
Moreover, of the 19, 17 are in active service, with two parked, offering an average age of 15.1 years.
Air India flight AI887, which made the emergency landing, departed Delhi at 0631 local time, and initially climbed out towards Mumbai.
After around 20 minutes in the air, the aircraft landed without further incident.
Engine Trouble The Reason for Emergency Landing…
As per ASN, it is understood an issue with engine number two caused the Boeing 777-300ER to turn back to it’s departure field.
It is unclear exactly what the nature of the issue with the engine was, but it was enough to make the crew turn back to Delhi and not continue on to Mumbai.
From the flight map as well, it looks like the issue arose quite quickly after takeoff given how little time it took to get the aircraft back on the ground.
The issue was under control, and the crew didn’t declare a general emergency via the 7700 squawk code at all during the short flight.
Is The Aircraft Grounded?
VT-ALS, the Air India Boeing 777-300ER involved in the emergency landing on AI887 Delhi-Mumbai was grounded following the incident onboard.
Data from Flightradar24 indicates that it will be back in operation by December 24, and will operate the AI185 service to Vancouver.
That, of course, is subject to change in case anymore issues arise on the airframe between now and then.
But for now, the Indian carrier will have it operational on it’s network by Christmas Eve.
As soon as we have more information pertinent to this incident, then we will update you accordingly below.
Continue to follow The Aviation Hub for more insight and analysis.
