Saturday, November 16, 2013

Air India Flight's Door Opens Midway, Makes SOS Landing

By Suresh Raina | INN Live

If it is Air India then anything is possible. In yet another shocking incident, the door of a Boeing 747- 400 aircraft opened mid-air after it took off from Jeddah. Luckily for the 450 passengers on board, the opening was detected well on time by the crew and the aircraft made an emergency landing. INN Live has the exclusive pictures of the open door and got the first hand account from a official present in the flight. Here's what happened according to this official who doesn't wish to be named.

AI 963 Jeddah-Hyderabad-Bombay took off for its destination with 450 passengers on board. At a height of 3,000 feet the right hand side second door started opening all of sudden much to the shock of the passengers. Suddenly there was deafening noise of the engine and the passengers got panicky.
At once the crew informed the cockpit of the incident and an emergency landing was requested. But then the fuel tank was all full since the aircraft had just taken off. As a first the fuel was dumped in the air and then a critical emergency landing was made. Once the aircraft touched base the passengers heaved a sigh of relief.

Back at Jeddah the engineers rectified the aircraft and the aircraft flew again and landed at the Mumbai International Airport.

What could have caused the incident? Experts say that unless the aircraft doors are set into automatic state from manuel the aircraft cannot take off. So is human error completely ruled out?

DGCA speaking exclusively to INN Live maintained that an inquiry had been ordered and that the matter was being looked into. DGCA however accepted that the door wasn't properly locked and that detailed investigation would reveal the real cause of the incident.

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