Air India's Dreamliner faces technical snag at Hong Kong airport

Air India

An Air India Dreamliner aircraft faced a technical issue at the Hong Kong airport on Thursday morning and underwent checks before being cleared to fly to Delhi.

The Boeing 787-8 plane VT-ANO, which faced the issue on Thursday, is the same aircraft in which the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed seconds before landing at the Birmingham airport on October 4.

"AI315 operating from Hong Kong to Delhi on 16 October was delayed due to a minor issue necessitating a reset of a component.

"The aircraft underwent checks, took off after being cleared for operation and landed in Delhi," an airline spokesperson said in a statement to PTI.

As per information available on flight tracking website Flightradar24.com, AI315, operated by Boeing 787-8 aircraft VT-ANO, was scheduled to take off from the Hong Kong airport at around 8.50 am (local time) but was delayed and departed at about 11.30 am.

The spokesperson also said that at Air India, the safety of passengers remains top priority.

On October 4, RAT got deployed on the Boeing 787 aircraft, operating the flight AI117 from Amritsar to Birmingham.

In the backdrop of the incident, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), last week, directed Air India to reinspect the RAT (emergency power source) for stowage on all aircraft whose power conditioning module was replaced by the airline in recent times.

RAT deploys automatically in the eventuality of a dual engine failure or total electric or hydraulic failure. It uses wind speed to generate emergency power.

On October 9, flight AI154 from Vienna to Delhi, operated with a Boeing 787 aircraft, bearing registration VT-ANO, was diverted to Dubai, due to "sudden failure of autopilot system, triggering a series of technical malfunctions".

Earlier this month, pilots' grouping Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) urged the government to ground Air India's entire B787 aircraft fleet and also conduct a special audit of the airline.