Air India says Chennai incident was a 'go around', passengers including five MPs land in Delhi

NEW DELHI: Air India officials have explained the reason for the emergency landing of an Air India flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi in Chennai. They have rejected the claim that there was another plane on the runway. Air India has clarified that what happened was a go-around procedure and that the pilots are prepared to deal with such situations. A go-around is a procedure in which the plane takes off again just before or after landing. This may be decided by the pilot himself or due to an intimation from the air traffic control. This is also common due to obstructions on the runway.

Flight AI 2455, which was flying with a total of 160 passengers, including four MPs from Kerala, experienced a signal failure on the radar in the Bengaluru airspace. As a result, an emergency landing had to be made in Chennai. Initial reports said that the flight had to make an emergency landing. The plane was instructed to land by the Chennai Air Traffic Services (ATS) after circling the area four times.

Meanwhile, the MPs said that the flight crew had informed them that the landing attempt was abandoned at the last minute because there was another aircraft on the runway. The passengers included MPs K C Venugopal, Kodikunnil Suresh, Adoor Prakash and K Radhakrishnan from Kerala and Robert Bruce from Thirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. All the passengers, including them, were taken to Delhi in another flight. Meanwhile, Air India said that the technical fault in the plane has been resolved.