'Technical issue' forces Air India Boeing 787 to turn back to Hong Kong
The issue occurred just days after a similar Dreamliner crashed into buildings in Ahmedabad on Thursday, killing at least 279 people in the aircraft and on the ground. It was the first Dreamliner crash and only one passenger survived.
"A passenger flight, AI315, operated by Air India from Hong Kong to New Delhi made a return to Hong Kong International Airport and requested local standby at around 1p.m. today," a spokesperson for Airport Authority Hong Kong said.
Air India said in a statement that the plane returned to undergo checks "as a matter of abundant precaution."
Some aviation analysts believe the wing flaps on the plane that crashed were not in the correct position.
"It looked like the jet struggled to maintain lift," Dan Bubb, a longtime pilot and now airline historian at the University of Nevada, said.
"Some pilots have speculated that the flaps may not have been set to the takeoff position. Historically, there have been crashes when flaps weren't properly configured."
Authorities have ordered Air India to carry out more safety checks on all Boeing 787s. The Dreamliner has flown commercially since 2011.
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But both Hong Kong and Canada lag behind efforts in the United States, where there is growing awareness of the benefits oyster reefs provide such as increasing fish numbers, regulating water quality and providing coastal protection against erosion from storms. Not just for shucking More than a thousand years ago, when Hong Kong was just a collection of small fishing villages, thousands of tonnes per year of oysters were dredged up and whole oyster shells were used in the construction of buildings across the Guangdong region. When shells are burned they turn into lime, the raw material used to make cement. It was this industry, which boomed in the 19th century, that saw almost all wild oyster reefs removed. While people mostly associate oysters with food, they also fulfil several other functions. 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"If you look at projects and investment in the U.S., you cannot compare it with the Canadian investment. It's peanuts." Case in point: In Harris Creek, in Maryland, an oyster reef restoration project cost $29 million US, which is part of a wider project in Chesapeake Bay. Within three years, it was getting more than that back in increased fisheries production — everything from fish to crabs to prawns to other shellfish — which in turn benefits the local fishing community, according to Bayden Russell, associate director of ecology and biodiversity at the University of Hong Kong. "They're getting over 100 per cent return per year," he said. "It's renewable, every year." Unlikely oyster reef One bright spot in Hong Kong is a project in the waters near Hong Kong International Airport. The airport is almost entirely built on reclaimed land, in an area that was once a thriving oyster habitat, according to Thomas. But it was a heavily degraded and challenging environment, she adds. Due to it being a restricted area, it was de facto protected and gave permission for the restoration of an oyster reef. Last year, recycled concrete was put into the ocean along the 500-metre seawall — since restoring oyster reefs requires reintroducing hard substrate into the ocean for the oysters to latch onto. It was then seeded with native oysters and recycled shells, provided by oyster farmers, as well as larvae grown in the laboratory at the University of Hong Kong. Teams have been monitoring the new reef to see if the plan to boost oyster populations along the runway is working. Challenges remain, and Thomas will continue to monitor the reef over the next year, but if all goes to plan, a thriving new reef will emerge. Russell says that the airport project was exciting because it was a "demonstration that we can actually do this at scale," noting that there used to be at least 750 kilometres of coastline along southern China's Pearl River Delta that had oyster reefs Oyster reefs belong there: researcher Beyond that, the notion that oyster reefs can exist in Hong Kong needed to be replanted in people's minds, according to Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of the Sea Around Us project at the University of British Columbia. "People have to realize that the default setting for a coastline like Hong Kong is to have an oyster reef, and thus rebuilding an oyster reef would be not introducing something new, but rebuilding something that was there before. That belongs there," he said. Hong Kong is in the process of updating its Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, which will outline the priorities for the next decade. Thomas is advocating for the government to do more to protect the city's coastal marine ecosystems, and expand its marine protected areas to include vulnerable biodiversity hotspots. "Hong Kong may be a very urbanized area, but it's extremely biodiverse. It is just 0.03 per cent of Chinese waters, and yet, 25 per cent of all marine species recorded [in China] are found in Hong Kong," she said. Around five per cent of waters are designated as marine parks or marine reserves, which are protected areas under the city's law managed by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. She wants to bring this up to at least 10 per cent, which is still below the global target of 30 per cent.
