Air India flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi was diverted to Chennai because of weather radar issue: DGCA

Aviation watchdog DGCA on Monday said that the Air India's flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi was diverted to Chennai on due to suspected malfunctioning of the weather radar of the aircraft on Sunday evening. It added that the aircraft landed safely, amid some Parliamentarians who were onboard the plane flagging safety concerns.

On Sunday, Air India said the flight AI2455 was diverted to Chennai following a suspected technical issue, while senior Congress leader K C Venugopal claimed the flight came "frighteningly close to tragedy".

The DGCA on Monday provided a detailed statement on the incident, saying the Airbus A320 aircraft VT-TNL encountered moderate turbulence in during flight.


"Crew observed that the weather information depicted on the weather RADAR was not accurate, suspecting weather RADAR malfunction diverted to Chennai," the regulator said and added that during engineering inspection no deficiency was observed but as a precautionary measure, "WX radar transreceiver was replaced with a serviceable one".

The aircraft received a clearance from the Air Traffic Control and orbited 25 nautical miles northeast of Chennai for 43 minutes from 21:25 to 22:08 hours to avoid overweight landing and burn extra fuel, the statement said.

"After the aircraft was cleared for approach Runway 25 at Chennai, at 22:19 aircraft was instructed to carry out a missed approach by ATC as departing Gulf Air flight GFA053 (Chennai-Bahrain) reported debris on left side of runway. Apron control carried out inspection of the runway and nothing was observed.

"Aircraft was given landing clearance and aircraft landed safely at 22:39 IST," the watchdog said.

The flight AI2455, which was scheduled to depart at 19:15 hours on Sunday, was delayed by 49 minutes due to the late arrival of the aircraft from Delhi, and took off from Thiruvananthapuram at 20:04 hours.

On Monday, Air India said the crew of the Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi flight followed the protocols and the first landing attempt had to be aborted due to suspected foreign debris presence on the runway.

The decision to divert the flight to Chennai was a precautionary measure and was taken in the best interest of the safety of passengers and crew due to a suspected technical issue. The flight was not diverted to Bengaluru as the weather in Chennai was clear, the airline said.