An Air India Dreamliner flying from Melbourne to Delhi on Wednesday had to be diverted to Kuala Lumpur after all the three onboard flight management computers (FMC) — that control navigation and allow a plane to be fly long distances on auto pilot — reportedly failed simultaneously. The flight, AI 301 with 231 people on board including 18 crew members, landed in KL safely but is now stuck there.
"AI is rushing engineers and technical equipment to KL. Passengers are being taken care of there and those who have to rush to Delhi are being accommodated on other airlines. The other passengers will leave as soon as the aircraft is rectified. There was no safety issue in the latest snag but it has caused inconvenience to passengers and huge expenses to the airline," said a senior AI official. Rattled by the unending snags, Boeing is sending a team of its experts from Hong Kong to KL.
The latest snag in this particular Dreamliner — VT-ANJ, which in December saw its windshield cracking while parked in Delhi — is being viewed very seriously as the all the three FMC failed simultaneously. "FMCs control and manage the entire navigation of the aircraft and tells auto pilot what commands to execute at what time based on the route pre-programmed into them on ground before take off for each journey. The failure of FMC does not affect safety as the aircraft remains fly-able but is severely degraded," said a source.
All the three FMCs failing together mean that the plane has to be taken off auto pilot and pilots have to manually divert the aircraft at the nearest airport. Ultra modern aircraft like Airbus A-380 or B-787 are designed by manufacturers in a way that maximum work is done automatically to enhance safety. "Due to human limitation of flying such long distances, safety margin is indirectly compromised when auto pilot cannot be used and hence it is recommended that the pilot manually to the nearest airport," said the source.
Like all airlines using the Dreamliner, AI is constantly in touch with Boeing for the unending technical snags with the aircraft. Just when one issue is resolved, some other thing crops up. While none of the issues have so far affected safety, they have led to massive inconvenience to passengers thanks to delays, cancellations and an uncertain schedule of flights operated on the B-787.
"We are earning passenger ire for no fault of ours as Boeing seems to have hurriedly made this plane. Delays mean we put up passengers in hotels, accommodate them on other flights and end up spending huge sums, apart from earning the flyers' anger," said an official.
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