GoFirst flight makes emergency landing in Coimbatore due to faulty smoke alarm
The Bengaluru-Male plane was carrying 92 passengers.
A Bengaluru-Male GoFirst flight made an emergency landing at the Coimbatore airport on Friday after a faulty smoke alarm rang off, ANI reported.
The plane was carrying 92 passengers and had left Bengaluru at 12 pm.
“An hour after the flight took off, the engine overheated and the warning bell sounded,” an unidentified official at the Coimbatore airport said, according to ANI. “Shocked by this, the pilot contacted air traffic control and requested permission to land at the nearby Coimbatore airport.”
The flight landed safely at the Coimbatore airport at 12.57 pm and all passengers were disembarked.
The alarm went off after the twin engines allegedly overheated, according to PTI.
“The engineers checked the engines and declared that there was some ‘fault’ in the alarm,” an unidentified official told the agency. “They [later] declared that the aircraft was fit to travel.”
This is the fourth time in less than a month that a GoFirst flight developed technical snags.
On July 20, a GoFirst flight from Delhi to Guwahati was diverted to Jaipur after its windshield cracked mid-air. On July 19, a GoFirst aircraft from Mumbai to Leh was diverted to Delhi after its engine developed a snag and a Delhi-bound GoFirst flight had to return to Srinagar after the exhaust gas temperature crossed the limit in one of the engines.
On July 17, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had chaired a high-level meeting with senior officials of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) over the issue of air safety.
Scindia had directed the officials in the meeting that there should be no compromise with the safety of passengers.
More than 460 technical malfunctions were reported by airlines in India in the past year, according to the data from the civil aviation regulator.