On May 12, 2013, during turbulent weather, three flights made emergency landings at Biju Patnaik Airport.
Two Indigo flights from Raipur to Kolkata and Bangalore to Kolkata made emergency landings, as well as an Air India flight from Agartala to Kolkata.
No serious injuries were sustained, but several crew members and passengers were affected by turbulence.
On May 13/14, 2013 the cockpit door of one of Air India’s planes locked the captain out while he was using the toilet. The co-pilot and trainee pilot had to land the plane in Bhopal for ground maintenance engineers to fix the problem.
On May 13, the flight took off from Delhi for Bangalore.
Air India’s official statement was that the captain couldn’t return to the cockpit because the door was locked and that all efforts to open it, even from inside, failed during Tuesday’s flight from New Delhi to the southern Indian city of Bangalore.
The airline claims that no one was endangered during the “unscheduled landing.” No doubt the passengers watching the pilot attempting–and failing–to open the cockpit door would disagree. Apparently there was some degree of panic among the passengers. This is just one in a long series of air safety issues from Air India.
After the plane landed at 5.55pm, ground maintenance engineers did fix the door. The flight continued to Bangalore at 8.45 pm, and made a safe landing at at 8.45 pm.
Southwest Airlines flight WN-147 had to return and make an emergency landing at Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts, on May 16th.
The Boeing 737-700, heading towards Chicago, Illinois, had to return due to severe turbulence.
The plane landed safely.
Two passengers and 2 crew members sustained injuries.
GoAir flight G8-101 had to return and make an emergency landing in Kolkata, India, on June 7th.
The Airbus A320-200 plane took off for Port Blair, India, but had to turn back after a bird strike.
The plane landed safely. All one hundred and sixty-seven people aboard remained unharmed.
Thomson Airways flight TOM2334 made an emergency landing at Larnaca International Airport, Cyprus at 9:00 P.M. on July 8.
The Boeing 767-300, travelling from Manchester, UK, to Larnaca, Cyprus, had to declare an emergency after it experienced short-term air turbulence.
Among the 328 passengers and 10 crew members aboard, 4 crew members sustained injuries.
The injured were taken to hospital.
Ethiopian Airlines flight ET-8806 made an emergency landing in Delhi, India, on February 25th.
The plane en-route from Mumbai, India, to Kathmandu, Nepal, was diverted due to a technical issue.
The plane landed safely. There were 255 people aboard at the time; all of them remained unharmed.
The civil aviation regulator of India has issued a directive, ordering the airlines to use real-time tracking for locating the planes.
In the directive, the Director General Prabhat Kumar has obligated the airlines to track all of their aircrafts with the on-board Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) or Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B). In areas where these two systems do not have coverage, the airlines will be required to devise other mechanisms to ensure real-time tracking. Operators will also need to ensure that the real-time tracking systems are in working condition before the flight.
The order has been issued in context of the preliminary report released by Malaysian authorities, which revealed that the flight 370 could not be located because the aircraft did not transmit its coordinates in real-time.
According to the statement released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), “While commercial air transport aircrafts spend considerable amount of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no international requirement for real time tracking of the aircraft. This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner.”
