Indian budget carrier IndiGo’s flight from Sharjah to Hyderabad, in South India, had to be diverted to Karachi on Sunday after the pilots observed a defect in one of the engines.
“The pilot observed a technical defect in Flight 6E-1406 [from Sharjah to Hyderabad]. Necessary procedures were followed and as a precaution, the aircraft was diverted to Karachi,” IndiGo said in a statement.
An additional flight, sent from Ahmedabad, brought all the stranded passengers from Karachi to Hyderabad in the afternoon, the airline officials said.
India’s civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has ordered an investigation into the incident.
Sunday’s incident with the IndiGo flight came close on the heels of the Dubai-bound flight of another Indian budget carrier, SpiceJet, making an emergency landing at Karachi airport on July 5.
The Delhi-Dubai SpiceJet flight had to be diverted to Karachi after detection of ‘indicator light’ malfunctioning.
An official of the Pakistan civil aviation authority confirmed that an IndiGo flight had landed in Karachi.
According to authorities in Karachi, all the passengers have been taken care of properly and provided refreshments after they were moved to the transit lounge.
They said the engineering crew had detected faults in engine No. 2 of the IndiGo plane.
“The plane was not cleared for flight, so the Indian carrier has sent an alternative aircraft,” Indian wire agency PTI reported, quoting a Pakistani aviation authority official.
Air traffic between the UAE and India have been seeing a massive surge in the recent weeks, triggering network expansion plans being drawn up by most of the Indian carriers.
Such aircraft malfunction incidents, however, could impact these plans unless airlines take passengers fully into confidence on the safety aspects of their flights, aviation industry officials said.
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