A Mumbai-bound Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa made an emergency landing at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport at 1:42 am on Friday after the Boeing 787 Dreamliner experienced a mid-air cabin depressurisation.

The incident occurred aboard flight ET640, operated by aircraft ET-AXS, while cruising at 33,000 feet over the Arabian Sea. The aircraft underwent a rapid descent after the depressurisation warning was triggered, according to data from Flightradar24.

"On landing, seven passengers were attended to by the airport medical team for decompression-related symptoms, out of which one required hospitalisation," a source said as quoted by the Times of India.

Cabin depressurisation is a rare but serious occurrence in commercial aviation.

Aircraft cabins are sealed and pressurised with conditioned air and oxygen to allow safe travel at high altitudes where atmospheric oxygen is low. On rare occasions, the pressurisation system can fail.

Aircraft cabin depressurisation can occur because of structural failures, system malfunctions, accidental crew actions, or deliberate decisions by the flight crew. In some cases, crew members may unintentionally activate or mismanage pressurisation controls. Rarely, a pilot might intentionally depressurise the cabin, for instance, to disperse smoke in an emergency.

In such events, oxygen masks automatically deploy from the overhead panels.

This incident comes days after 11 people — including six crew members — reported dizziness and nausea aboard an Air India Heathrow-Mumbai flight on June 23, operated by a Boeing 777. That incident is still under investigation.

As cabin pressure fell and oxygen levels dropped, reports suggest the situation may have caused panic among passengers. The London-bound flight struck a medical hostel seconds after takeoff. A formal DGCA investigation is underway, but the cause remains unclear as the aircraft’s black box has yet to be analysed.