‘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.
Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
8 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
A bid to undo a colonial-era wrong touches a people's old wounds
Their efforts to repatriate ancestral remains, which have been in a British museum for more than a century, have been 'a trigger for the Nagas,' said Dolly Kikon, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is Naga herself. Naga society has changed immensely since those remains were taken. To contemplate their return means reckoning with those changes, and with how many of them are the result of external forces and violence. Advertisement Members of Naga communities in northeastern India have worked for five years with the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, whose collection of Naga cultural objects is the largest in the world, toward the goal of repatriating the hundreds of human remains in the collection. In June, a delegation of 20 Naga leaders, elders and scholars visited the museum and saw those objects for the first time. 'I stood there beside them quietly, feeling a deep sorrow in my heart,' Kikon said. The human remains in the collection, which number more than 200, include a warrior's cranium, a woman's skull decorated with buffalo horns and a piece of skin with hair attached. Naga tradition holds that human remains are sacred, carrying life and spirit. 'They are restless, the spirits will not be in peace unless they find a resting place,' said K. Ongshong, a Naga elder from Longleng village in the Indian state of Nagaland. Advertisement Most of the remains were donated to the museum by J.P. Mills and J.H. Hutton, British colonial administrators in northeastern India. While some were given to the men as gifts, most were collected against Naga people's will during military expeditions into villages, according to experts. For years, the skulls were included in a Pitt Rivers exhibit titled 'Treatment of Dead Enemies,' under the label 'headhunting trophies' alongside remains from other Indigenous groups, including the well-known shrunken heads of the Shuar people of South America. That changed in 2020, when 120 of the human remains in the collection, including the shrunken heads and Naga remains, were removed from display and put in storage. In their place stand blue information boards explaining the contentious collection and the museum's decolonization efforts. 'These displays didn't match with our values any more,' Laura Van Broekhoven, the museum's director, said in an interview. Headhunting was practiced among Naga warriors, who collected the heads of enemies they killed in raids or war. (Despite the labeling by the museum, experts said it was unlikely that all the Naga skulls were enemy trophy heads; some may have been taken from burial sites.) Because of the gruesome nature of the practice, and the way it helped to feed a persistent stereotype of the Nagas as violent and warlike, some Nagas are hesitant to bring the remains home. The repatriation discussions are also touching on deeper wounds for many of the Naga people, who number about 2.5 million. Advertisement That is clear from the difficulties raised, in this case, by one of the first questions in any repatriation process: Where should these objects go? Today, most Nagas live in the Indian state of Nagaland. But Naga communities can also be found in the states of Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh -- and in Myanmar. Before the British colonists drew their borders, the Nagas lived in a contiguous region loosely known as the Naga hills, now divided among those modern states. In 1928, Nagas began making formal demands for independence, not wanting to be a part of the British Raj or India. 'The Nagas shared no cultural similarities with India,' said Akum Longchari, a peace and conflict activist based in Nagaland. But when the British left the subcontinent in 1947, Nagas were brought under the control of the Indian state. Decades of political struggle and armed resistance followed, broadly known as the Naga National Movement. India saw it as a threat and suppressed the insurgency. The fighting killed thousands over the years. India implemented laws that gave sweeping powers to its security forces and protected them from prosecution, which experts say led to human rights violations. Although a ceasefire was reached in 1997, the state of Nagaland remains one of India's most militarized regions. For some Nagas, the truce feels precarious, and much suspicion and mistrust remain. Longchari said Naga society had been in a constant state of struggle since British colonization in the 1800s. 'Nagas have had no time for reflection,' he said, adding, 'One colonizer left and another took their place right after.' Another factor complicating the repatriation process is the enduring legacy of American Christian missionaries, who first arrived in the Naga hills in the 19th century. Advertisement If the remains are laid to rest, some Nagas wonder, what funeral rituals should they be accorded -- the rites of Christianity, since that is the religion most Nagas now follow, or traditional, animistic ones? Knowledge of those older rites may now be limited, since the missionaries changed the region's culture along with its religion, said Nepuni Piku, a human-rights activist. 'They did not just come with their Bible, but with their cultural baggage,' Piku said. Naga culture was painted as backward and outdated, Christianity as modern, which led to the abandonment of many Naga cultural practices and rituals, he said. Naga activists and scholars, along with the Forum for Naga Reconciliation in Nagaland, a civil society organization, have been trying to build consensus on these questions and more. Once there is agreement on a plan for repatriating the remains and artifacts, a claim will be made to the university. If the university accepts the claim, then the governments of both countries will get involved. Last fall, a two-day conference on the proposed repatriation brought together community elders, scholars and students in a nondenominational Christian church in Dimapur, the largest city in Nagaland. A college student at the conference asked what relevance the traditions of the past had for the urban world he inhabits. Loina Shohe, a sociologist, replied that Naga culture, like any other, is not static but evolves with time. 'Our ancestors were self-sustained, not primitive or savage,' she said. The Nagas' history has caused them immense intergenerational trauma, Dr. P. Ngully, a psychiatrist in Nagaland, said in an interview last year. He was part of the delegation that visited Oxford, one month before he died in July. Such trauma, which he called an 'invisible epidemic,' can exacerbate alcohol and substance abuse, he said, problems that Naga society is trying to address among its youth. Advertisement Some younger Nagas are looking for ways to reconcile with that traumatic history. Throngkiuba Yimchungru, 35, conducts art workshops that he calls DeConstructing Morung. Long ago, morungs were youth dormitories where Nagas came together to socialize -- one of the traditions lost to Christianity and time. Yimchungru said he wanted to adapt the concept to the present. 'Morungs can be anywhere -- in a school, office, within a big city,' he said. 'They needn't be within an architectural structure.' Nagas' discussions with the Pitt Rivers Museum have also been an attempt to reconcile with the past. But the return of the remains in the museum's collection could conceivably take decades. The fastest repatriation the museum has ever carried out took a year and a half, while the longest -- the repatriation of Tasmanian human remains -- took 45. The Naga delegation to the museum opened its June visit with an Indigenous chant that alludes to the original parting of the Naga ancestors from their creator. The chant concludes with the hope that the ancestor will be reunited with the creator and help to heal the wounds of the past. 'I don't know if the process of repatriation will do the healing for us,' Kikon said. 'But I do know there's a lot of trauma and we need the healing.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
Air India flight to London aborts take-off due to technical issue weeks after fatal crash
An Air India flight bound for London was forced to abort take-off due to a suspected technical issue. Flight AI2017, which was scheduled to depart Delhi for London on Thursday (31 July) was brought to a halt after the cockpit crew decided to 'discontinue the take-off run'. Passengers on board the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner were asked to disembark as precautionary checks were carried out. Air India later deployed an alternative aircraft to complete the journey to London. An Air India spokesperson said: 'Flight AI2017, operating from Delhi to London on 31 July, returned to the bay due to a suspected technical issue. 'The cockpit crew decided to discontinue the takeoff run following standard operating procedures and brought the aircraft back for precautionary checks. 'An alternative aircraft was deployed to fly the passengers to London.' The incident comes just weeks after an Air India flight bound for London Gatwick struck a medical college hostel in Ahmedabad minutes after take-off, killing 241 people. Indian aviation officials confirmed the pilot issued multiple distress calls before the Gatwick-bound flight crashed in Gujarat state on 12 June, killing 241 people on board and at least 29 more on the ground. 'Thrust not achieved... falling... Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!' the pilot is reported to have said moments before the aircraft lost height and erupted in flames. There were 230 passengers and 12 crew members on board, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese citizens and one Canadian, according to Air India. Alongside the formal investigation, the Indian government has set up a high-level committee to examine the causes leading to the crash. The committee will focus on formulating procedures to prevent and handle aircraft emergencies in the future, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said. Air India and the government are looking at several aspects of the crash, including issues linked to its engine thrust, flaps, and why the landing gear remained open as the plane took off and then came down.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
United Airlines Flight Declares 'Mayday' amid Engine Failure
The Munich-bound flight from Washington Dulles Airport landed safely after more than 30 minutes in the air on July 25NEED TO KNOW United Airlines pilots declared a "Mayday" shortly after departing Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia last week The Munich-bound flight carrying 219 passengers experienced a left engine failure, according to radio recordings All passengers and crew deplaned safely after the "mechanical issue," according to a United spokespersonPilots operating a United Airlines flight declared 'Mayday' after experiencing an engine failure shortly after takeoff last week. On the evening of Friday, July 25, United flight 108 departed Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) in Virginia. The Munich-bound flight operating a Boeing 787 carried 219 passengers and 11 crew members. But as the plane ascended to 10,000 feet, the pilots noticed an issue. 'Failure, engine failure, left engine, United 108,' pilots told air traffic controllers in a recording obtained by You can see ATC on YouTube. 'Declaring an emergency.' 'Mayday, mayday, mayday,' they added while flying at 5,000 feet. Air traffic controllers immediately instructed the pilots to make a right turn and return to the airport, given the clear airspace. But as the plane turned around to land, the pilots determined the aircraft was too heavy since it was fueled for a transatlantic flight. It forced them to stay in the air until they were cleared to adjust the weight of the passenger jet. After closing a second loop around the airport and dumping the necessary amount of fuel, crews were able to land at IAD after more than 30 minutes in the air. All passengers and crew deplaned safely A spokesperson for Washington Dulles told PEOPLE the plane landed safely and was checked by Airports Authority Fire and Rescue personnel then towed to a gate. According to the airline, the plane experienced a 'mechanical issue.' 'United flight 108 to Munich returned to Washington Dulles shortly after takeoff to address a mechanical issue,' a spokesperson shared in a statement with PEOPLE. 'The plane landed safely, and all passengers deplaned normally at the gate.' They added the flight was canceled and the carrier made alternate arrangements for travelers. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Earlier in July, a Delta Air Lines flight departing Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) was forced to turn around after one of its engines appeared to burst into flames after takeoff. The Friday, July 18, flight 'landed safely' after a reported engine fire, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In video footage captured by YouTube channel L.A. Flights, flames appear out of the plane's left engine. 'Delta flight 446 returned to Los Angeles shortly after departure following an indication of an issue with the aircraft's left engine. As nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and crew, the flight crew followed procedures and safely returned to the gate,' a Delta spokesperson shared in a statement with PEOPLE. The Delta representative added all 226 passengers deplaned normally and were accommodated on a new aircraft. The FAA confirmed it will investigate the Los Angeles incident. Read the original article on People
