In what has been classified by the Directorate General for Civil Aviation as “a serious incident”, a Jet Airways aircraft, Mumbai-Muscat flight 9W540 with 122 passengers on board hit a stationary, empty Kingfisher plane parked in a neighbouring bay.
Mumbai airport seems to be fast turning into a perennial crisis zone, as two more mishaps — one involving a collision between two aircraft, the other a plane stranded on the taxiway — in a long series of unfortunate incidents that have plagued the airport in recent months, raise concerns about passenger safety and professional management of the airport.
In what has been classified by the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) as “a serious incident”, a Jet Airways aircraft, Mumbai-Muscat flight 9W540 with 122 passengers on board hit a stationary, empty Kingfisher plane parked in a neighbouring bay.
At about 2am on Saturday, the Jet aircraft, a Boeing 7370-800, was being pushed back and towed from its parking bay when its left wing hit the tail of the Airbus E321 Kingfisher aircraft, damaging its left stabilizer.
While the Jet passengers were put on another flight to Muscat after being made to wait six hours, the other plane has been rendered out of action for a few days.
Pending the inquiry, one technical personnel has been suspended and two other ground staff derostered.
According to a press statement issued by the DGCA, preliminary facts prima facie revealed certain lapses on the part of ground technical personnel responsible for pushback.
“Overall there was no coordination between the ground crew,” said the DGCA statement.
In the second incident, a plane stranded on the taxiway lead to seven flights getting diverted at Mumbai airport. Late on Friday evening, an Air India London-Mumbai flight AI 130 landed on the runway, and on exiting to taxiway L4, halted there.
“The pilot reported hydraulic failure of the landing gear and said the plane cannot move,” said a source from Mumbai airport.
“There was smoke in the landing gear and emergency services sprayed foam on the starboard landing gear,” says an official from Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL). During this operation, taxiway N was blocked till 12.10am.
As a result, the air traffic control (ATC) had to change the use of the runways from 09-27 to 14-32.
“As 14-32 runway is shorter than the main runway, most international airlines which operate at night refused to use it. So there were seven flight diversions — six to Ahmedabad and one to Hyderabad,” said the official.
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