Air India has confirmed it’s suspending a few of its long-haul flights from Saturday, together with routes utilizing the identical kind of Boeing plane which crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad.
The choice follows final Thursday’s deadly crash involving a Boeing 787-8 flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick.
All however one of many 242 folks on board had been killed, with round 30 fatalities on the bottom, on this planet’s worst aviation catastrophe in a decade.
It was confirmed on Wednesday that the only survivor, a British nationwide, had left hospital.
Most non permanent reductions will final till a minimum of mid-July, affecting each 787 and 777 plane sorts, and consists of routes to Gatwick.
The agency mentioned in an announcement it was chopping worldwide providers due to “enhanced pre-flight safety checks” and to accommodate “additional flight durations arising from airspace closures in the Middle East”.
Routes between Delhi-Nairobi, Amritsar-Gatwick and Goa-Gatwick are being suspended solely.
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The frequency of different providers may even be lowered from Delhi, Bengaluru and Amritsar to sure locations in North America, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Europe – together with Heathrow and Birmingham.
The route between Ahmedabad and Gatwick stays unaffected.
Air India has apologised and promised to contact affected passengers to supply different flights or refunds.
The airline’s chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Wednesday insisted the Boeing 787-8 plane had a “clean history”.
“The right engine was a new engine put in [in] March 2025. The left engine was last serviced in 2023 and was due [its] next maintenance check in December 2025,” he informed the Indian channel Instances Now..
Picture:
Chairman of Air India, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, says the aircraft that crashed had a ‘clear historical past’. File pic: Reuters
The warning notices and an investigation report weren’t in any manner associated to final week’s crash and had been despatched days earlier than that incident.
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The federal government has additionally mentioned there has not been any resolution but on the place the flight knowledge recorders, additionally known as black packing containers, can be analysed.
The federal government mentioned in an announcement that India’s Plane Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) would determine the place the recorders can be examined after making a “due assessment” of all technical, security and safety concerns.
Black packing containers have two parts – the flight knowledge recorder and cockpit voice recorder – and supply essential insights for crash investigators.
They embrace altitude, airspeed, the standing of controls and pilot conversations which assist decide possible causes of crashes.
