Muscat: Oman Air’s Muscat-bound flight WY232 was recently diverted to Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport soon after taking off from Hyderabad, India due to low fuel.
Commenting on the incident, Usama al Haremi, head of corporate communications and media department at Oman Air, said, “On December 27, flight WY232 took off from the Hyderabad airport as scheduled and was airborne at 3.40pm India time. The captain had requested the air traffic control in Mumbai permission to land, which he did at 5.56pm.”
Aviation sector norms state that aircraft are supposed to carry enough fuel to travel from origin to destination; divert from destination to an alternate airport in case of a problem at the former and hover at both destination and alternate airport for up to 30 minutes.
In this case the destination airport was Muscat and the alternative airport was Sharjah in UAE. “However, whilst following the flight plan en route to Muscat, the captain identified that Sharjah was no longer legal as an alternative airport even though he had adequate fuel for the flight to land at the destination. In line with Oman Air’s policies of always operating above safety standards, the captain rightfully decided to divert to Mumbai. Every such diversion involves significant costs in time and monetary value to Oman Air, yet it was done to ensure rigorous safety compliance even if the chances of dependence on the additional safety measure were remote,” added Haremi.
05/01/13 Muscat Daily.com
