Aircraft suffers tyre burst at Pune airport

Passengers on board Air India’s flight from Delhi to Pune had a close shave when the AI aircraft suffered a tyre burst while landing at Pune airport on Thursday evening. All 151 passengers were reported to be safe.

An airport official confirmed the incident that occurred around 7.30 pm but reported it as an engineering snag and insisted that there wasn’t much cause for concern.

“The flight IC 849 developed an engineering snag. The A320 aircraft was scheduled to leave for Delhi as it’s a round trip. But as the aircraft has been grounded, passengers for Delhi were taken on a separate aircraft,” said Dhairyashil Vandekar, Air India’s Pune station manager.

As many as three flights were affected following the incident which included two departures -- Jet Airways flight to Indore and AI flight to Delhi and one arrival of Indigo from Delhi. The Indigo aircraft was on its way to land at Pune airport but was redirected to Mumbai as the affected plane was still at the runway.

While AI refused to acknowledge the tyre burst, a press release issued on behalf of Jet Airways, clearly mentioned the incident took place because of tyre burst.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who was in Pune to attend a wedding, was scheduled to leave for Delhi that was to leave at 7.45 pm and had arrived at the airport. But as the flight was cancelled, he chose to have dinner at a local five star hotel and then took a Go Air flight to Delhi later in the night.