In the latest in the Air India jumbo fire case, two Air India pilots will now face an inquiry by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA); the commander of the flight, Captain Jha and First officer Captain Bapat will be questioned.
The pilot and the co-pilot have been de-rostered, as per latest reports. These pilots will be questioned by DGCA about Friday's mishap.
Meanwhile, the airline is playing down the incident.
Though a probe has been ordered and an engineer taken off the roster, the airline's executive director speaking to NDTV says it was a one-off incident and denied that the engine caught fire due to poor maintenance or the fact that the plane was old.
It's every aviator's nightmare, a fully fuelled Boeing 747 jumbo jet catching fire. That's exactly what happened to an Air India jetliner on Friday in Mumbai as it was taxiing for take off.
Fortunately, all the passengers were safely evacuated. In fact, the nightmare for these passengers had started much earlier.
First, their original plane had a technical snag, then their replacement plane caught fire by the time they got a third plane, some passengers had had enough and 16 people said they'd rather fly another airline.
A major tragedy for the 213 passengers aboard Air India's Boeing 747-400 was averted somehow in time.
The troublesome journey began at 4.30 am when the flight to Riyadh was aborted because it developed a snag in the engine. The passengers were deplaned at made to wait for over six hours for another aircraft.
At 10:50 am, another AI flight began its journey to Riyadh. While still on the taxiway, suddenly smoke started bellowing out from the extreme left engine under the wings.
Then there were flames, and 3 fire engines rushed in to douse the flames as airline crew evacuated passengers on emergency slides.
In 10 minutes, the fire was out and the crew and passengers on safe ground.
