New Delhi: A flight with Congress president Rahul Gandhi on board to Patna was forced to return to Delhi on Friday after experiencing “engine trouble”. Gandhi wrote this on Twitter and also posted a video of the flight which shows him, the pilot and the co-pilot in the plane.
“Engine trouble on our flight to Patna today! We’ve been forced to return to Delhi,” Gandhi tweeted. “Today’s meetings in Samastipur (Bihar), Balasore (Orissa) & Sangamner (Maharashta) will run late. Apologies for the inconvenience,” he said. Gandhi is on a campaign trail, criss-crossing the length and breadth of the country for the Lok Sabha polls.
This is not the first time his plane has experienced trouble mid-air. On April 26 last year, a plane carrying Gandhi and some others from Delhi to Hubballi airport in Karnataka for campaigning for assembly polls developed a technical problem and tilted heavily on the left side. The plane dipped steeply with violent shuddering, but soon recovered and landed safely.
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had come out with its 30-page report on that incident in which it pinned the blame on the pilots for the near-crash of the Congress president’s chartered plane. After the incident, Gandhi had expressed his desire to go on Mansarovar Yatra, which he undertook later that year.
