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Fire breaks out on Air India's flight from Hong Kong after landing in Delhi
The fire was detected while passengers were disembarking flight AI315 from Hong Kong, the airline said in a statement.
'The incident occurred while passengers had begun disembarking and the APU was automatically shut down as per system design,' an airline spokesperson said.
The APU is installed at the rear of the aircraft and serves as a backup power source. It is primarily used to start the main engines and operate critical onboard systems while the aircraft is on the ground.
Passengers de-boarded safely but the aircraft, which landed in Delhi at 12.31pm local time, was damaged, the airline said.
Flight tracking service Flightradar24 identified the affected aircraft as an Airbus A321.
This was the third Air India scare in two days. A flight from the southern city of Kochi veered off a rain-soaked runway in Mumbai on Monday. All passengers got off safely but the aircraft's engine and runway infrastructure were damaged. The plane was grounded and both pilots de-rostered.
A few hours later, flight AI2403 from Delhi to Kolkata aborted take-off at high speed after a technical issue was detected. The pilots stopped the aircraft, and all 160 passengers were safely disembarked. The flight was rescheduled for later in the evening.
These incidents come amid heightened scrutiny of flight safety following last month's deadly Air India crash in Ahmedabad that killed 260 people.
A preliminary investigation report released a month after the crash revealed the Boeing Dreamliner's fuel control switches flipped from 'run' position to 'cutoff' within seconds of the take-off. The report said that one of the pilots was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he had cut off the fuel. The other responded that he hadn't.
The report caused an uproar with pilot associations accusing the investigators of indirectly blaming the pilots for the crash.
A subsequent report in The Wall Street Journal suggested that pilot error could have played a role in the incident. However, Indian authorities condemned the report as speculative and irresponsible.
Meanwhile, Air India said it found no problems with the fuel control switch mechanisms across its Boeing 787 and 737 fleet during inspections carried out after the Ahmedabad crash.
India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau expects to give a final report detailing its investigation into the crash within a year.
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