Sunday, June 02, 2019

Mumbai engineers didn’t carry right spare part to repair aircraft

The three Air India engineers who flew from Mumbai to London last week with spare parts to repair the grounded Boeing 777 aircraft had not carried one particular “oil ring seal”. When the engineering team finally opened the engine to detect the cause of the oil leak, they found that only one seal was damaged. But to Air India’s ill-luck, it was the very seal whose replacement the airline’s Mumbai engineering team had not brought along.

On Tuesday, May 28, Air India’s one-year-old Boeing 777-300 (VT-ALX) had to be grounded after it developed an oil leak and passengers booked on its 1.15pm London-Mumbai flight AI-130 were booked into a hotel instead. The next day, Mumbai’s AI engineering team reached with spare parts. “About 280 agitated passengers were waiting to board at the Heathrow terminal after spending a day in a hotel and hours at the airport. And here were the London-based engineers and Mumbai AOG (aircraft on ground) team with the aircraft in the apron area. They opened the engine only to find that only one part, a ‘starter motor seal,’ was damaged,” the source said.

AI spokesperson confirmed that their “aircraft on ground” engineering team had all but the particular seal. Another source said, “The general practice is to source spare parts from local airlines but none had it. Finally we managed to procure it from Virgin Atlantic. After two days of no sleep and non-stop work, the team finally installed the new seal at 2am on Thursday.”
02/05/19 Manju V/Times of India
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