Operations at the Mumbai airport were severely affected for 21 hours as the main runway was blocked after four tyres of an incoming Lufthansa aircraft burst while landing late on Friday.
All 163 passengers and crew on board the Airbus A330 flight were deplaned through stairs and none of them was hurt, the airline said in a statement.
Planes stranded As the wide-bodied aircraft remained stranded on the runway till late in the evening, the Mumbai airport had to shift its operations to the secondary runway, leading to the cancellation of many international flights and delay in arrivals. The aircraft was finally towed away around 8 p.m. on Saturday. Operations were expected to be normalised by midnight.
Soon after the incident on Friday, four international airlines, including Singapore Airlines, United Airlines and Air India, had to cancel their flights. The Singapore Airlines flight was stranded at the airport and left after a delay of over 22 hours.
Air India engineers were working round the clock to replace the tyres as the national carrier is the designated entity to attend to such accidents in any airport in India.
Lufthansa in a statement said: “On May 13 at 10:50 pm local time, four tyres of the aircraft of flight LH764 from Munich to Mumbai had been damaged.” Flight LH765 scheduled for May 14 had to be cancelled. At least 223 passengers will be affected and the airline is trying to rebook them on other flights.”
Inquiry into incident The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has initiated an inquiry. A DGCA official said: “Preliminary inquiry indicates that some foreign object on the runway caused the tyre bursts or there was some mechanical failure that led to the incident.”
