Patna: A major air disaster was averted when the pilot of a Kolkata-bound Indigo aircraft detected fuel leakage in one of its engines, minutes before its take off on Tuesday night. As many as 181 passengers had booked their tickets in the flight for Kolkata and were waiting for their turn to board.
Reports said that IndiGo flight (6E 342), which had arrived from Kolkata, was scheduled for the return trip and was due to take off at 10 pm. However, the alert pilot reported the fuel leak in its left engine of the flight and asked the station manager to ground it for safety reasons.
Also Read: Tech snag forces Indigo flight to make emergency landing at Patna
Chaos and commotion prevailed at Patna’s Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport (JPNI), as the passengers were clueless as why they were not being asked for boarding. One of the passengers said that they were told that the flight was being rescheduled for technical reasons, but they had no idea about the exact reason.
The passengers lost their cool at around 11.30 pm after the airline company did not informed about the next flight. Officials of IndiGo said that an empty flight was arranged at midnight and all passengers were taken to Kolkata.
Also Read: IndiGo flight makes emergency landing at Patna after engine failure
It was later informed that 158 passengers were sent to Kolkata by special flight, while 23 remaining were sent to Delhi and Ahmedabad to catch the connecting flights to other places.
In June 2017, 174 passengers of the Indigo flight (6E 508) had a close shave as it had developed a major technical snage minutes before departure. All passengers had to be evacuated safely as per the standard operating procedure. The airline later stated that the flight was involved in a low-speed reject due to suspected engine stall.
Also Read: Bengaluru-bound SpiceJet flight suffers tech fault at Patna, delayed
In November last year, a Bengaluru bound Spicejet flight had to be grounded at Patna’s JPNI airport after the pilot had detected some technical issues in the movement of wings.
