At the identical time, the aviation security regulator has sought a “comprehensive report” from the U.S. plane maker Boeing on the preventive measures to be applied with respect to the un-commanded Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployment incident.
The growth comes within the wake of two back-to-back incidents involving Air India 787 plane lately, and the pilots’ grouping Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), writing a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister, urging the federal government to floor Air India’s total B787 plane fleet, in addition to a particular audit of the airline.
On October 4, RAT obtained deployed on Air India Boeing 787 plane, working its Amritsar-Birmingham flight AI-117, simply earlier than the touchdown, whereas on October 9, AI-154 from Vienna to Delhi, operated by a Boeing 787 plane bearing registration VT-ANO, was diverted to Dubai, as a result of “sudden failure of autopilot system, triggering a series of technical malfunctions”.
RAT deploys robotically within the eventuality of a twin engine failure or complete electrical or hydraulic failure. It makes use of wind velocity to generate emergency energy.
“Air India has been advised to reinspect the RAT for stowage for all the aircraft, whose PCM module was replaced in the recent past,” a senior DGCA official has stated, including that additional investigation is in progress.
PCM is an important electrical part that converts, regulates and distributes electrical energy from the plane’s energy era system to numerous onboard techniques and tools.
It could also be talked about right here that Air India had categorically denied “any assertion that there was an electrical failure” within the Boeing 787 plane that was diverted to Dubai on October 9.
DGCA has additionally suggested Air India to “review the work package of ‘D’ Check for the actions required in view of the change of PCM module, for any discrepancy”.
During touchdown at 400ft, the RAT unlock message got here, and it obtained deployed. The pilot didn’t report any associated abnormality, and the plane landed safely, based on the DGCA official.
Following this, Boeing-recommended upkeep actions for un-commanded RAT deployment had been carried out, and no discrepancy was noticed, the official stated, including that accordingly, the plane was launched for service and introduced again to Delhi on October 5.
“Boeing has been requested to provide a comprehensive report outlining the preventive measures to be implemented in respect of the un-commanded RAT deployment incident,” the DGCA official famous.
Besides, detailed info concerning comparable un-commanded RAT deployments occurred globally on Boeing 787 collection plane, as talked about within the Boeing 787 Fleet group Digest, has additionally been sought from the plane maker, he stated.
“Boeing has also been asked to provide any service difficulty report received from aircraft operators worldwide after the change of the PCM module,” the official added.
Though Air India had cited “technical issue” on account of which its Vienna-Delhi flight was diverted to Dubai, the FIP, in its letter to the Civil Aviation Minister, revealed that the Boeing 787 plane “experienced failures across critical systems, which included Autopilots, ILS (instrument landing system), flight directors (FDs) and flight control system degradation with no autoland capability”.
“The pilots could not engage the autopilots due to electrical malfunctions; thus, pilots were constrained to fly manually at night and divert to Dubai. Moreover, the FDs were not available with degraded flight control systems. The aircraft landed safely at Dubai,” the FIP had stated within the letter, whereas demanding the grounding of your complete B787 fleet and a particular DGCA audit of Air India.
It can be pertinent to notice right here that in one of many worst plane accidents in India, a complete of 260 folks, together with 241 passengers, died when Air India’s Boeing 787-8 plane working flight AI171 to London Gatwick crashed quickly after take-off from Ahmedabad on June 12.
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