An IndiGo aircraft on Wednesday aborted take-off from Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport following failure of an air-conditioning unit on the plane.
No harm came to any of the 178 passengers onboard the Kolkata-bound Airbus 320 flight 6E-634, who were de-boarded, and the aircraft was brought back to parking bay number one.
This was the airline's second aborted take-off in a fortnight. On June 30, 174 passengers onboard a Patna-New Delhi IndiGo flight had a narrow escape after a technical snag developed in the engine of the flight, with smoke entering the cabin, while the flight was just about to take off from Patna.
An airport official said that there were 132 passengers from Patna and another 46 from Lucknow on the Kolkata-bound flight on Wednesday.
"The IndiGo aircraft had lined up for take-off at 10.30am when its pilots reported technical fault in the plane and returned to the parking bay," said Patna airport director Rajender Singh Lahouria.
He said rumours that the pilots had to slam the emergency brakes were not true, and that the aircraft had not started taxiing when the pilots found that the air-conditioning unit was not working.
"The pilots detected the snag on the runway, after the air traffic control (ATC) had given the aircraft clearance for take-off," said an airport official. "However, when the aircraft had lined up for take-off on the runway, the pilots detected the snag in one of its AC units, and they decided to abort the take-off and quickly intimated the ATC and returned to the parking bay."
An IndiGo executive said the aircraft has been grounded and engineers have been summoned from the airline's head office in New Delhi to repair it.
The ill-fated Kolkata-bound flight finally left Patna at 2.58pm and arrived at its destination at 4.04pm, five hours behind schedule.
The incident affected other IndiGo flights too. Flight 6E 5126 from Delhi to Patna was delayed by 21 minutes, and 6E 581 from Delhi to Patna was cancelled. The airline didn't give any reason for the flight cancellation. The airline also postponed its Kolkata evening flight 6E 633 by one hour from 6.30pm to 7.30pm.
An official of the airline said under cover of anonymity that nine out of IndiGo's 22 A-320 aircraft Neos have been grounded due to engine issues.
IndiGo spokesman Ajay Jasra said in a statement: "...we continue to face operational issues with the Neo engine.... While this has caused operational disruptions, both Pratt & Whitney (PW) and Airbus are working to address the issues. In the meantime, we continue to receive the necessary operational and technical support including the provision of spare engines to help mitigate the operational impact on us."
The statement added: "We also faced some issues this month in getting some engines cleared at the customs post the implementation of GST. However, the government has cleared the confusion and has come out with a notification stating that leased aircraft and engines are exempt from custom duty so we are hopeful that this problem is behind us now."
