Flight disaster averted: Pilot aborts landing at last minute

By Pamela Raghunath, Correspondent
Published: 17:32 December 10, 2012
Gulf News

Mumbai: It was almost touchdown for the Mumbai-Chennai Indigo flight 6E 431 at Meenambakkam airport, Chennai, at around 12 noon yesterday, when the plane suddenly took off again, leaving passengers scared and confused.

Sitting at a window seat and watching the ground racing by, passenger Uma Raj told Gulf News: “I was waiting for the seconds when the plane’s wheels would touch the runway.”

“Instead of landing, the plane just took off, in fact quite smoothly. We were taken aback especially those sitting near the window and had watched the whole thing happen.”

For the perplexed passengers, the announcement from the pilot was that he had to take off since another plane was standing on the runway. “He told us, ‘that’s why we took off’.

“We just kept our fingers crossed that the second landing would be safe and fine. The aircraft then circled around Chennai for about 10-15 minutes and finally landed safely. The pilot again announced that we had still arrived earlier than the scheduled time.”

In another recent case on November 16, a young couple flying into Mumbai from Delhi in the evening went through an equally frightening experience when their plane, Jet Airways 9W354, had to abort landing. “As the aircraft got ready for descent, the pilot, a lady, announced we were ready to land and instructed the cabin to prepare for landing,” Nitila Natarjan, a banker, told the paper.

The plane then made its approach towards the runway and was flying quite low, she said. “We could see the runway. And suddenly there was a surge, like on a roller coaster, and the plane started rising. We didn’t know what happened. It took five minutes for the pilot to tell us what happened.”

She apologized and said, “A plane that should have taken off hadn’t done so and was still on the runway.” And since the notification came at the last minute, the landing was aborted. “We circled for about 15 minutes before landing again. It was too scary,” said Natarjan.

Article:  http://gulfnews.com

Indigo:  http://book.goindigo.in