- Flight AI500 from Bhubaneswar to Delhi was cancelled due to high cabin temperature before departure
- Flight AI349 from Singapore to Chennai was also cancelled for maintenance requiring extra time
- DGCA found over 100 violations in Air India operations, including seven critical safety risks
A Delhi-bound Air India flight from Bhubaneswar was cancelled on Sunday due to "high temperature" in the aircraft cabin just prior to its departure for the destination, the airline said in a statement.
Air India did not provide details such as the number of people on board the aircraft, the type of aircraft or even the time the now-grounded flight was scheduled to take off from Bhubaneswar.
This is the second incident of an Air India flight confronting a technical glitch in a day.
This comes amid the aviation safety regulator DGCA detecting over 100 violations and observations, with some of them identified as critical safety risks, during an audit of the Tata Group-run private carrier, and one of its Boeing 787-8 plane operating its London Gatwick flight crashing on a medical college within minutes of its take-off on June 12, killing 241 people on board and 19 on ground.
"Flight AI500 scheduled to operate from Bhubaneswar to Delhi on August 3 has been cancelled due to a technical issue causing high cabin temperature on ground prior to the departure," Air India said in a statement.
"Our airport team in Bhubaneswar is assisting the impacted passengers with alternative arrangements to fly them to their destination to Delhi. We regret the inconvenience caused," the airline said.
The flight, according to flight tracking website flightradar24.com, was to be operated by an Airbus A321 aircraft at its scheduled time of 12.35 pm, and land in Delhi at 2.55 pm.
Earlier in the day, Air India said its flight AI349 scheduled to operate from Singapore to Chennai was cancelled due to a maintenance task identified prior to departure, which required additional time for rectification.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation last week detected around 100 violations and observations related to Air India's training, crew's rest and duty period norms, and airfield qualification, among others, sources had said.
Of these, as many as seven have been identified as Level-1 violations, which are considered critical safety risks and require immediate corrective action by the air operator, they had said.
An online pan-India survey last month had stated that around 76 per cent of respondents opined that many airlines in India are spending more on publicity than safety. The online survey conducted by LocalCircles revealed that as many as 64 per cent of these respondents had experienced at least one rough flight in the last three years, involving a difficult takeoff, landing, or inflight situation.
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