Team Herald
VASCO/curchorem: A Goa-Delhi Indigo 6E-336 flight’s engine caught fire mid-air just minutes after taking off from the Dabolim airport on Sunday night forcing the pilot to make an emergency landing.
According to reports, the flight took off at around 10.20 on Sunday night with State Power Minister Goa Nilesh Cabral, Director Agriculture Madhav Kelkar, former GSPCB chairman Dr Simon D’Souza and others on board.
After around 15 to 20 minutes, on account of fire, the pilot switched off the left engine and made an emergency landing at the Dabolim airport at around 11.30 pm.
Confirming the fire incident, Environment Minister Nilesh Cabral informed that he and his team were safe.
“After around 25 minutes of flight take-off from the airport, passengers who were seating behind started screaming after noticing the fire on the left side of the engine. Immediately, the flight captain put off one of the engines and luckily the fire was extinguished. The flight captain landed the flight safely with single engine,” said Cabral and thanked God for saving lives of the passengers as there could have been a major tragedy if the fire had to spread to the fuel tank.
According to Cabral, he boarded the Indigo flight at around 10 pm at Dabolim airport to travel to Delhi to attend several scheduled meetings throughout the day on September 30 and after the incident they were brought back to Goa and shifted to another flight at 12.50 am.
The incident has raised safety concerns among the locals, who have expressed their unhappiness over such incidents occurring at the International Airport at Dabolim. In the past few months, this is the fourth or fifth time when the aircraft has developed a technical snag and this could prove a grave threat to passengers.
Reacting to recent incident at the airport, Bharat Kamat, a Vasco resident, said incidents of aircraft developing technical snag are regular. Such lapses should not take place at the international airport. Government and the concerned authorities should seriously look into this matter immediately.
Another Vasco resident Saish Sansgiri said there should be periodic maintenance of aircraft. An independent body should look into the safety and maintenance of these flights. If airlines are reporting such errors and problems then the operations of such airlines should be stopped for some time and after thorough checks and maintenance work it should be resumed.
Sansgiri opined that the air passengers should be given training in cases of emergency. The concerned authorities need to take such incidences seriously and solve these issues.
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IndiGo refutes fire occurrence in flight’s engine
PTI: IndiGo has strongly refuted the occurrence of any fire in the flight’s engine.
In a statement, it said, “During the shutdown process of the engine, it is not unusual that unburnt fuel ignites some sparks seen at the exhaust of the engine, which was noticed by the passengers. At no point of time there was any danger of fire in the engine”.
“As per our records, the engine had no previous history of any technical issues. This aircraft was powered by CFM engine which has done 12,000 hours since the last shop visit. This is well within the expected life of the engine,” the airline further said.
However, the cause of the incident is not known yet and is currently under investigation, it added.
“The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has also started an investigation into the IndiGo Goa-Delhi flight incident,” a senior DGCA official said.
