How safe is our national carrier?

At 7:40 pm yesterday at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi an already-delayed IC-833 got ready for take off. Five minutes later, passengers breathed a collective sigh of relief as the plane started taxiing towards the runway. But a couple of minutes later, they felt a sudden jolt as the plane came to a screeching halt, slipping and sliding, and everyone was thrown forward in their seats.
Minutes later, the pilot's voice crackled on the overhead speaker informing passengers of “a technical snag”. The pilot had been forced to abort take off after problems in the nose wheel while taxiing to the runway.
“He said we were saved, he had managed to stop the plane before it hit the mud. We were on the verge of hitting the mud and the concrete,” a passenger on the flight, Vishesh Agarwal, told TIMES NOW.
The Civil Aviation Ministry has taken serious note of the incident and shot off a letter to Indian, directing it to take urgent steps to revamp its engineering network.
Just a day earlier on Saturday, an Indian Airlines flight on its way from Sharjah to Lucknow made an emergency landing at Delhi airport due some hydraulic problems.
Air India, too, hasn't had a smooth ride of late – one may recall an incident with Air India incident less than a fortnight ago, on April 9, when within a span of few hours, two Air India flights landed under emergency conditions.
23/04/07 Times Now.tv

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Categories: Air India Apr 2007, Airports Apr 2007, Indian Apr 2007, Safety Apr 2007