June 10: As the Air India plane took off from Silchar airport, ground crew saw something drop from the sky. It was one of the ATR-42 plane’s nose wheels.
The 48 Guwahati-bound passengers learnt about it 15 minutes later. Ratu Hazarika clearly remembers the on-board announcement that set off “the scariest moments of my life”.
“Fifteen minutes into the flight, the crew asked the passengers to fasten their seat belts and announced the plane might have to make an emergency landing because of a technical snag. It created panic inside the aircraft,” the divisional sales manger with pharmaceutical company Akumentis Healthcare told The Telegraph.
Eventually, Flight ATR 9760 landed safely in Guwahati after circling over the airport for nearly an hour to burn fuel as a precaution against fire, with ambulances and fire engines lining the runway. None of the passengers or four-member crew was injured, but Hazarika said the 80-odd minutes of tension were nerve-wracking.
The Guwahati resident said that soon after the announcement, the cabin crew began giving safety demonstrations relating to an emergency landing and a fire, deepening the panic.
“An airhostess told us some emergency situation was anticipated and the plane might even have to land in a river. She also demonstrated how to use life jackets. The cabin crew told us to keep our heads down and stay calm,” he said.
Two passengers fainted. “There was a lot of turbulence and the plane shook violently while landing,” he said. “When the plane landed safely, I felt as if I had got a second life,” he said.
An aviation expert, Samar Desai, told The Telegraph that there was not really much risk provided the “standard procedure” for landing with a damaged nose wheel was followed.
“In such a situation, a pilot is expected to land on the main landing gear (the wheels under the wings) and keep the nose in the air, using air brakes to generate drag and reduce the speed of the aircraft,” said Desai, who handles Indian operations for an aviation college in Australia.
“The goal is to slow down the aircraft as much as possible before the nose wheel touches the ground,” he said.
In normal landings, too, the nose wheels are the last to touch the ground, so this process merely delays that a bit more till the speed has been reduced to a certain level.
The 50-odd minutes the plane circled over the airport also reduced the weight of the plane — a crucial step for a safe emergency landing. The crew moved the luggage to the rear to shift the plane’s centre of gravity further to the aft.
Moloy Dutta, a senior ATC official in Guwahati, said the early warning from the Silchar ATC had been helpful and gave enough time for preparations.
“We had asked the aircraft to fly lowpass (low), so that the ground engineers at Guwahati airport could see what the problem was,” Dutta said. “Good piloting helped avert a disaster.”
Sources at Guwahati airport said the ATR-42 series aircraft that Air India used in the Guwahati-Silchar sector were mostly old and lack proper maintenance. Air India and directorate-general of civil aviation (DGCA) officials had arrived in Guwahati and trying to establish whether a lapse in maintenance led to the left nose wheel dropping off.
Silchar air traffic control had immediately informed pilot Urmila Yadav and the Guwahati ATC about the mishap, and several airports in the region.
