Air India pilot saves lives of 370 passengers, lands aircraft at US airport despite multiple systems failure and lack of fuel

About 370 passengers onboard an Air India flight from New Delhi to New York had a narrow escape on 11 September after the flight experienced multiple system failure. The flight, which was to land at the John F Kennedy airport in New York, managed to land at an alternate designated airport in Newark. [caption id=“attachment_4500607” align=“alignleft” width=“385”] Representational image. PTI.[/caption] On 11 September, when Air India’s AI-101 was flying from Delhi to New York, it was suddenly caught in the worst flying conditions any pilot would want to imagine. The pilot reported to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) that the flight experienced multiple system failure and was low on fuel, which also restricted its time of flying when the system failed. “We’re really, you know, stuck and there’s no fuel,” Captain Rustom Palia, who was commanding the aircraft, told the ATC, according to  NDTV. Moreover, the flight also witnessed a malfunctioning of all three of its Instrument Landing System (ILS) receivers on board the jet. “This Instrument Landing System is unpredictable”, the pilot told ATC “because every time we turn towards the localiser, it is just gone,” NDTV reported. The ILS becomes more crucial in bad weather conditions such as the ones faced by the pilots of AI-101, when they could not visually estimate an approach because of heavy cloud cover. This meant that the pilots of the aircraft, which was a nine-year-old Boeing 777-300, had to manually land it. An Air India spokesperson told  Hindustan Times, “The weather was bad at New York airport and due to the snag, radar was not visible in the cockpit. The pilot had to carry out landing without the help of radar and since weather was bad in New York, the aircraft was diverted to Newark. An emergency crew had already been put on stand-by at the Newark airport. According to the latest information, Air India has set up an inquiry to investigate how did the aircraft developed a snag. It also constituted an internal inquiry under the monitoring of airlines flight safety department. Confirming the news, Air India spokesperson Praveen Bhatnagar told ANI, “For New York diversion, the flight safety department is investigating the matter. The Air India pilots have successfully handled the situation.” “The pilot did a good job by diverting the flight and landing safely,” an official of the Director General of Civil Aviation, told Hindustan Times. He confirmed that the aviation regulator had begun an investigation. “Our probe will revolve on technical glitches”. With inputs from ANI