New Delhi: An Air India flight, with several Members of Parliament on board, experienced a terrifying mid-air ordeal on Sunday night, narrowly averting a potential catastrophe.
The Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi service, AI 2455, was forced to divert to Chennai after developing a technical snag and was later involved in a heart-stopping landing attempt.
The incident has prompted a senior Congress leader to demand a full investigation into what he described as a severe safety lapse.
Congress MP from Alappuzha, K. C. Venugopal, took to social media to recount the harrowing experience. He detailed how the flight, which had already faced a delay, was rocked by intense turbulence shortly after its late-night departure from Kerala’s capital.
Roughly an hour into the journey, the flight crew announced a “flight signal fault” and decided to reroute the aircraft to Chennai.
What followed, according to Venugopal, was a tense two-hour period of circling the Chennai airport. The situation escalated dramatically during the first landing attempt. “In that split second, the captain’s quick decision to pull up saved every life on board,” Venugopal wrote in a post on X. The MP alleged that another aircraft was reportedly on the same runway, leading to the aborted landing. Following the captain’s swift action, the plane successfully landed on its second attempt.
Venugopal’s account has raised serious questions about aviation safety protocols. The Congress leader emphasized that passenger safety should not be left to chance and called on the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Ministry of Civil Aviation to launch a comprehensive probe. He stressed the need for accountability and measures to prevent a recurrence of such incidents, which he termed a grave lapse in aviation safety. The incident has cast a spotlight on the state of air travel safety in India, particularly on government-run carriers.
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