It was a close shave for 154 passengers and crew on board an IndiGo flight which had to be evacuated using emergency slide-chutes the moment the plane landed at the Delhi airport on Wednesday as "dense smoke" started coming out of the aircraft.
Around 30 passengers suffered injuries and were treated at the airport as the IndiGo crew took 75 seconds to evacuate the passengers.
IndiGo flight 6E-176 from Mumbai to Delhi with 147 passengers, one infant and six crew members touched down in Delhi on runway 27 at 3.35 pm when air traffic controllers observed dense smoke coming out of the aircraft.
Sources said there was a leakage of hydraulic fuel in the aircraft and as the oil fell on the "wheel well area", which is extremely hot during the landing as brakes are applied to bring the aircraft to a halt, there was smoke. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered a probe into the incident. No previous snags had been reported in the aircraft, an A320, which was recently inducted into the IndiGo fleet.
"Initial probe has revealed there was no fire. The smoke emanated from the left brake assembly of the aircraft's landing gear," an official said.
On March 8, an IndiGo flight from Delhi with 182 passengers on board had caught fire after landing at the Kathmandu airport. The fire had broken out in the right brake assembly area of the aircraft.
"The flight made a normal landing. As soon as the Captain got the information about the dense smoke observed from the ATC tower, he immediately ordered the crew to evacuate all passengers. The evacuation was done on taxi way after safely landing the aircraft," IndiGo said in a statement. One passenger, sources said, suffered a fracture.
"Some of the passengers who suffered minor injuries during evacuation were given medical attention. There was no fire and this was not an emergency or priority landing," the airline said.
No comments:
Post a Comment