According to airport sources, the tail part of Air-India Express IX 385, carrying 170 passengers, hit the runway during take-off from the Calicut international Airport.
[Photo:SNS]
An Air India Kozhikode-Dammam flight with nearly 170 passengers and six crew members on board made an emergency landing at Thiruvananthapuram International airport at 12.15 pm on Friday, after it developed a technical glitch.
According to airport sources, the tail part of Air-India Express IX 385, carrying 170 passengers, hit the runway during take-off from the Calicut international Airport at 9.44 am on Friday. After the plane’s tail “touched the runway surface”, the pilot requested a precautionary landing, as per the airline parlance, and diverted the flight to Thiruvananthapuram International Airport.
Initially, the flight was scheduled to make a landing at Thiruvananthapuram at 11.03 am, which was later rescheduled to 12.15 pm as the pilot began flying around the airport to exhaust the fuel in a bid to reduce the aircraft’s weight, before landing in “emergency mode”.
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According to officials it was a safe landing and all the passengers were shifted to the transit lounge.
Later in the evening, the airlines announced that the technical snag in the Kozhikode-Dammam Air India Express flight, which made an emergency landing at the Thiruvananthapuram airport, has been resolved. The same plane will fly to Dammam. Another pilot will fly the plane, the airlines announced.
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