Go First Delhi-Guwahati flight's windshield cracks mid-air, diverted to Jaipur

The windshield of a Go-First flight between Delhi-Guwahati cracked mid-air on Wednesday. Due to bad weather, the aircraft did not return to Delhi and diverted safely to Jaipur, aviation regulator DGCA officials said.

This is the third incident of technical malfunction on a Go First aircraft in two days.

On Tuesday, Go First's Mumbai-Leh and Srinagar-Delhi flights faced engine snags and both planes were grounded by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

After the pilots observed that the windshield on the plane has cracked, they wanted to return to Delhi but could not do so due to heavy rains on Wednesday afternoon, the officials said, adding the A320neo plane was then diverted to Jaipur.

There have been multiple technical malfunction incidents in planes flown by Indian carriers in the last one month.

Consequently, between Sunday and Tuesday, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia held multiple meetings with airlines and officials from his ministry and DGCA to ensure safety oversight.

The DGCA had on Monday said it conducted spot checks and found that an insufficient number of engineering personnel were certifying planes of various carriers before take-off.

Before each departure, an aircraft is checked and certified by an aircraft maintenance engineer (AME).

The DGCA has now issued guidelines for airlines on the deployment of qualified AMEs and directed them to comply by July 28.

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