Alliance Air plane makes emergency landing at IGI

An Alliance Air plane with 32 people on board landed under emergency conditions at Delhi airport on Saturday.

An Alliance Air plane with 32 people on board landed under emergency conditions at Delhi airport on Saturday.

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An alert was sounded by officials at the Pathankot airport, from where the plane had taken off, about pieces of rubber on the tarmac. The Alliance Air flight (CD 7814) was flying on the Delhi-Ludhiana-Pathankot-Delhi route.

The turbo-prop ATR-42 aircraft landed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport safely after the emergency exercise was set in motion, with ambulances and fire-brigades positioned along the runway here, airport officials said

The Pathankot airport officials alerted the Air Traffic Control after finding some pieces of rubber on the runway. As part of the routine procedure, the ATC at Delhi was alerted and an emergency was declared.

Sources said that the aircraft was supposed to first land at Ludhiana but couldn’t do so due to bad weather.

“It had to land at Delhi directly and was running short on fuel and had to ask for a priority landing,” said an airport official who didn’t wish to be named.

Air India, which owns Alliance Air as a subsidiary, denied there was any emergency landing. “The aircraft had a completely normal landing at 3.35 pm and all the 28 passengers on board and crew are safe,” said an airline spokesman.