Delhi-bound Air India flight grounded for want of engineering documents

A Delhi-bound Air India flight was grounded at Mumbai airport on Monday by the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) after it found that the engineering documents relating to the plane were not updated.

This forced the airline to replace the aircraft, leading to a delayed departure of the city-bound flight from Mumbai via Aurangabad, sources said.

The flight arriving from Goa was scheduled to take off for New Delhi at 1500 hours. "However, during the inspection, the flight operations inspector of the DGCA found that the aircraft did not have the mandatory updated engineering documents. So, the aircraft was not allowed to take off and the aircraft was grounded," they said.

When contacted, an Air India official confirmed that the flight was delayed due to some documents issue.

"The aircraft, which was an Airbus A319 had to be replaced with an A321 due to some documents issue," the official said. The flight finally departed at 1615 hours with the new aircraft, the official added.