Ageing fleet and poor maintenance of aircraft by Air India is becoming a nightmare for the crew operating these aircraft and passengers flying them.
AI 879 Delhi-Bagdogra bearing registration number VT-ESC with 152 passengers and six crew members on board took off from Delhi airport at 12 pm on Friday. Before landing at Bagdogra, the aircraft reported a leak from the main hydraulic tank caused by the bursting of a pipeline in the main wheel bay. Within seconds the hydraulic tank released over 14.19 litres of oil and this was when the pilot decided to terminate the journey for Bagdogra and established contact with Kolkata ATC for an emergency landing.
“It was a very scary situation. We informed the passengers about only after the aircraft successfully landed in Kolkata,” said a cabin crew member on board the flight. There have been a number of cases of runway skid due to hydraulic leak.
Pilots operating these machines told it is not the first incident and many complaints have been sent to the airline on the poor performance of these aircraft. “These aircraft are very old and poor maintenance makes these aircraft even more risky. These aircraft were supposed to be replaced with the new Airbus 320s,” said an AI commander.
VT-ESC, an Airbus 320, which was commissioned in March, 1993, is over 22 years old now. In March, an aircraft from the same fleet, which was commissioned in 1989, had to make an emergency landing at Delhi airport after its landing gear got stuck.
Aviation expert Vipul Saxena said, “Laid-back attitude of Air India management and maintenance team has resulted in frequent failures of critical systems such as Hydraulics which takes care of aerodynamic pressure keeping aircraft flying safely. Despite frequent cases of doors, controls and under carriage malfunctioning Air India management has failed to take necessary step to keep check on these.”
However, Air India spokesperson said, “The aircraft landed safely and all the passengers were attended. A replacement aircraft was arranged to ferry the passengers to Bagdogra.”
