138 stranded passengers of SpiceJet leave for Dubai from Karachi in alternate aircraft
After being stranded for nearly 11 hours in Karachi, 138 passengers of a Delhi-Dubai SpiceJet finally took off for UAE on an alternate flight that was sent from India on Tuesday evening.
SpiceJet's Boeing 737 Max aircraft had made an unscheduled landing at the Karachi airport this morning after the fuel indicator malfunctioned. Pilots on board the aircraft had indicators of a possible fuel leak from one of tanks in the wings of the jet.
According to aviation regulator, Directorate General Of Civil Aviation, ''the crew observed unusual fuel quantity reduction''. In other words, the fuel display in the cockpit appeared to indicate an unexpected loss of fuel from the aircraft. This required the pilot to make a landing in Karachi though this was a precautionary landing, not an emergency one.
"On July 5, 2022, SpiceJet B737 aircraft operating flight SG-11 (Delhi - Dubai) was diverted to Karachi due to an indicator light malfunctioning. The aircraft landed safely at Karachi and passengers were safely disembarked. No emergency was declared and the aircraft made a normal landing. There was no earlier report of any malfunction with the aircraft. Passengers have been served refreshments," the airline's spokesperson had said.
SpiceJet sent an alternate aircraft SG 9911 from Mumbai to take the passengers to Dubai which took off at around 9:20 pm, news agency PTI reported.
"Apparently there was and is a problem with the aircraft's light indicator and it couldn't be repaired immediately and it didn't get clearance from the engineers so another aircraft was sent from Mumbai," PTI reported an official as saying.
The fuel light malfunctioning was the first of two incidents involving a SpiceJet incident on Tuesday. Later in the day, a SpiceJet aircraft, flying from Gujarat's Kandla to Mumbai, made a priority landing in the Maharashtra capital after its side windshield developed a crack mid-air.
All passenger and crew members are safe, the airline said in a statement.
Aviation sources have told NDTV that this is the seventh safety-related concern in SpiceJet in less than three weeks.
The aviation regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) conducted a fleet-wide safety audit of SpiceJet aircraft just last month and continues to carry out inspections on a case-by-case basis.