Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Air India aircraft gets stranded on runway

Thiruvananthapuram: An A-310 aircraft of Air India coming from Kozhikode was stranded on the runway of the international airport here for 29 minutes following “green hydraulic failure” on Tuesday.

The 100 passengers aboard the AI 981 flight bound for Dubai via Thiruvananthapuram were evacuated safely after the aircraft landed under full emergency measures at 1.27 p.m., airport sources said. The flight operations from the airport got disrupted for nearly 30 minutes as the aircraft got stranded.

Capt. Kaushik, commander of the flight, informed the Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Thiruvananthapuram of the “green hydraulic failure” immediately after takeoff from Karipur. The ATC immediately alerted the airport authorities.

The Airport Authorities of India alerted all agencies and made arrangements to handle any exigency. Airport sources said a Jet Airways flight coming from Mumbai was allowed to land first.

Later, the aircraft was towed to the parking bay and the runway was cleared for flight operations by 2.14 p.m. The AI 981 flight was scheduled to arrive here from Kozhikode at 7.45 a.m. and depart to Dubai at 9 a.m. Following the incident, a Simplifly Deccan flight had to hover above the airport for 16 minutes and the departure of a Jetlite flight from here was delayed by 20 minutes.

Airport sources said the efforts to rectify the snag by Air India engineers based in Thiruvananthapuram did not succeed and the aircraft was grounded at 5.35 p.m.

This is the second incident in the international airport during the last 15 days. An A-320 aircraft of Indian coming from Male was stranded on the runway for 39 minutes after smoke billowed out of an engine of the aircraft while landing on November 1.

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