Plane with minister onboard makes emergency landing

A Delhi to Frankfurt Air India flight with Minister of Science and Technology, Harsh Vardhan, onboard, had to return to the Indira Gandhi International airport after its departure due to some technical snag on Wednesday.

All 246 passengers along with the minister were then transferred to another aircraft which took off for the destination with a delay of more than four hours.

According to senior officers, the incident took place, around 2:50 pm when the pilots of an Air India flight AI 121, that had departed from the Delhi airport at its scheduled time 1.34 pm, detected a technical snag in the aircraft and requested they return. As they conveyed the emergency to the Air Traffic Control, a local standby was declared on board and the aircraft was given permission to land on priority.

“246 passengers were shifted to another aircraft which departed for Frankfurt at about 5.45 pm,” said an officer, adding one passenger offloaded himself.