A-I Boeing skids off runway, all passengers safe

A major disaster was averted on Saturday after a Chicago-bound Air India Boeing aircraft carrying 335 passengers and crew skidded and overshot the rain-soaked runway at the Mumbai airport and got stuck in the soft ground.

All those onboard were safe. The nose-wheel of the aircraft damaged some runway lights before getting stuck in the soft ground at the end of the secondary runway, which was thrown open for air traffic on Thursday, after the main runway was submerged for 48 hours following the heavy downpour.

The incident occurred around 7 am when it was raining heavily, leading to the closure of the airport for more than
two hours.

• Terrible Tuesday: Mumbai copes with a calamity

The Boeing 747-400 had come in from Bangalore and some more passengers were to join the flight with a change in crew.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said in Delhi that preliminary information suggested that the pilot did not apply full brakes to avoid skidding off the wet runway.

He said the pliot had estimated that the plane would come to a halt before the end of the runway. "It did so but nose-wheel went out of the runway by a few feet.

Passengers were taken to the terminal building and put on board in another Boeing 767-400, which took off at 12.05 pm with a total of 408 passengers and crew on board for Chicago via Frankfurt, AI spokesman Jitender Bhargav said.

"The imobilised plane has been pulled out in a record time of 90 minutes and towed to the hangar," he said.

Terrible Tuesday: Mumbai copes with a calamity