On Monday, two Airbus A320 Neo aircraft fitted with Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines have returned to the airports they took off from after facing technical snags.
A Delhi-Hyderabad IndiGo flight that took off around 8:30 am on Monday returned soon after. According to a Hindustan Times report, flight 6E-552 returned after the second engine experienced high vibrations in mid-air. Reportedly, the second engine suffered from high rotational speed vibrations for 15 seconds.
"There was a caution message during the flight. Taking cognizance of the precautionary message, the pilot followed the standard operating procedure", ANI quoted a IndiGo spokesperson as saying.
This is not the only IndiGo incident in recent times. A few days ago, a Bengaluru-bound IndiGo Neo A320 aircraft flight from Mumbai returned within an hour of take-off after the pilot observed a caution message flash, mid-air. The airlines said in a statement, the pilot saw the caution message flash twice and, alarmed, he rerouted the aircraft.
The IndiGo 6E 236 flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru had departed at 9.38am on December 6, but returned to base within an hour. An airlines official said, the Neo aircraft, which has twin engines, reportedly experienced two episodes of heavy vibration, once while climbing 4,000 feet and, the next, at 10,000 feet.
On Monday, December 9, a GoAir Singapore-Bengaluru flight carrying 158 passengers on-board had an air turn back shortly after takeoff following a technical issue, an official release said.
"GoAir flight G8 28 Singapore - Bengaluru had an air turn back on priority shortly after takeoff following a technical issue. There were 158 passengers on board. The aircraft is currently being attended to by the GoAir engineering team," a GoAir spokesperson said in a media statement.
The budget carrier was operating an A320 neo plane, as per flight tracking websites. It was grounded and attended to by the GoAir engineering team before taking off on Tuesday. According to reports, the reason was the odor of a suspected oil leak in the cabin and cockpit.
IndiGo and GoAir had in November been given an extension for the deadline to replace the their faulty Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines on their Airbus 320 Neo aircraft. Non-compliance with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) directives meant grounding of their fleet.
A DGCA official said that the timeline for IndiGo to replace the faulty engines remains January 31, 2020 for its entire A320neo fleet but the deadline for other batches of aircraft has been relaxed for both the two carriers, reported IANS in November.
According to the report, IndiGo has so far placed modified engines out of 23 aircraft. The other carrier GoAir has changed the engines on 9 aircraft out of 13.
In unrelated but similar news, on Tuesday, a Coimbatore bound IndiGo flight suffered a technical snag just hours before the take-off, leaving passengers stranded at the airport. The flight had been scheduled to leave the Chennai airport at 6:15 in the morning.
Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram was amongst the 147 passengers. The delay affected his schedule and hence he had to cancel his trip to Coimbatore. He later left for Delhi on an Air India flight at around 10 am.
