An Airbus A320 Neo plane of Tata Group-run Air India returned to the Mumbai airport just 27 minutes after take off as one of its engines shut down mid-air due to a technical issue, sources said on Friday, May 20. “Air India Mumbai-Bengaluru flight AI-639 was involved in an air turn back after engine number 2 had an inflight shutdown (IFSD) due to an engine stall and some other snags,” a DGCA official said in a statement. An Air India spokesperson said the passengers were flown to the destination Bengaluru after a change of aircraft on Thursday.
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is conducting an investigation into this incident, sources said. The A320 Neo planes of Air India have CFM's Leap engines on them as compared to IndiGo and GoAir’s Pratt and Whitney (PW) A320 Neo engines, which have had technical problems.
The pilots of the A320 Neo plane received a warning about high exhaust gas temperatures on one of the engines just minutes after the aircraft's departure from the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at 9.43 am. With that engine being shut down, the pilot landed back at the Mumbai airport at 10.10 am, sources said.
When asked about the incident, an Air India spokesperson said: "Air India accords top priority to safety and our crew are well adept at handling these situations. Our Engineering and Maintenance teams had immediately started looking into the issue."
The flight, which was scheduled to land in Bengaluru at 11am, finally arrived at the destination over three hours late at 2.40pm.