“During the flight, the aircraft encountered moderate turbulent conditions. The crew observed that the weather information depicted on the weather radar was not accurate and suspecting a radar malfunction, the flight was diverted to Chennai,” the regulator said.The aircraft moved away from the path to a nearby area to burn some fuel and avoid an overweight landing, it said. “The aircraft with the ATC clearance orbited 25 NM (nautical miles) northeast of Chennai for 43 minutes, from 9.25 pm to 10.08 pm,” it said. “After the aircraft was cleared for approach Runway 25 at Chennai at 10.19 pm, the aircraft was instructed to carry out a missed approach by the ATC as the departing Gulf Air flight GFA053 (Chennai-Bahrain) reported debris on the left side of the runway.An aviation expert said the presence of debris in any form (stones or even aircraft parts) was a dangerous situation as it could get into the engine of the flight and cause operational issues.The DGCA added that the apron control (ground control) staff then carried out an inspection of the runway but could not spot any debris. The aircraft was given landing clearance and the aircraft landed safely at 10.39 pm, it said.During engineering inspection by the DGCA, no deficiency was observed in the aircraft. “As a precautionary measure, the WX radar transceiver was replaced with a serviceable one,” the release added. The transceiver receives the weather signals, interprets it and feeds it to the the radar inside the cockpit, which is then displayed in the Navigation Display panel, the expert explained, An Air India source added the pilots had the option of landing in Bengaluru or Chennai but due to clear weather conditions at the latter, they decided to land there.
Source link
