Air India said on Tuesday (Jul 22) it has grounded a passenger jet for checks after a power generator caught fire shortly after landing at India’s capital city, New Delhi.
The aircraft’s auxillary power unit (APU) caught fire when its passengers were getting off the aircraft, and was automatically shut down, a spokesperson for the airline said in a statement.
APU is an electrical power generator typically located at the rear of an aircraft. Its primary function is to start the main engines and power essential onboard systems while the plane is parked at the airport.
Passengers of flight AI315 “disembarked normally” and are safe but the aircraft, which was flying from Hong Kong, suffered some damage, the airline said. It did not elaborate on the damage caused to the plane.
The impacted flight is an Airbus A321, data from flightradar24 showed.
Air India said it has notified the regulator of the incident. India’s aviation regulator was not immediately available for comment.
Air India has come under heightened scrutiny in the aftermath of one of its planes crashing fatally in the western Ahmedabad city in June, which killed 260 people.
The probe into the crash is focused on the fuel control switches of the Boeing 787 jetliner, with a final report from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau expected within a year of the incident.
The switches control fuel flow to aircraft engines, allowing pilots to start or shut them down on the ground, or manually intervene during in-flight engine failures.
An Air India jet also veered off the runway as it landed during heavy rain in Mumbai on Monday. The Airbus A320 flight suffered damage on the underside of one of its engines.
The incident, described by the airport as a “runway excursion”, briefly shut the main runway.
A Times of India report, citing sources, said three tyres had burst on the aircraft after the landing. TV footage from NDTV and India Today showed the outer casing of the engine damaged, with some apparent cracks.
