Air India flight makes emergency landing at IGIA

An Air India Delhi-New York flight was delayed by nearly 12 hours on Sunday, due to a technical snag in the aircraft, which resulted in an emergency landing.

An Air India Delhi-New York flight was delayed by nearly 12 hours on Sunday, due to a technical snag in the aircraft, which resulted in an emergency landing.

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The Air India flight (AI-101), left Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) for its destination — New York’s JFK airport — at 2am on Sunday. After flying for nearly half an hour, the pilot detected a technical snag in the right engine and requested Delhi air traffic control (ATC) if it could make an emergency landing.

The aircraft landed back safely at 3am under full emergency conditions. After a glitch was detected, the 339 passengers on board were shifted to another aircraft, which resulted in a delay. The flight then left Delhi again at 12noon on Sunday.

“Apart from the delay caused by changing aircraft, the crew, too, had to be changed. We suspect a bird hit resulted in the snag,” said an Air India official.