Mumbai-Bound Ethiopian Airlines Flight Suffers Mid-Air Depressurisation, 7 Fall Ill
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The incident occurred on flight ET640 (Addis Ababa-Mumbai) after the aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner – experienced a depressurisation mid-air.
A Mumbai-bound Ethiopian Airlines flight from Ethiopia's Addis Ababa reportedly made an emergency landing at city's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) on Friday after seven people onboard fell ill.
As per media reports, the incident occurred on flight ET640 (Addis Ababa-Mumbai) after the aircraft, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner – experienced a depressurisation mid-air. The issue started when the plane was flying over the Arabian Sea at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet.
The depressurisation warning led to a rapid decline in altitude as per FlightRadar24 data. The aircraft then made the emergency landing early morning at 1:42 am. Upon landing, seven passengers felt unwell and one was hospitalised, according to the media reports.
'On landing, seven passengers were attended to by the airport medical team for decompression-related symptoms, out of which one required hospitalisation," a source said as quoted by Times of India.
Usually, airplanes are pressurised with treated air and oxygen to accommodate high altitudes where oxygen concentrations are minimal. However, on rare occasions, the pressurisation system can fail. The pressure and oxygen level in the cabin will then drop, and oxygen masks deploy from the overhead panel.
The incident came days after five passengers and two crew members reported dizziness and nausea midair during an Air India Heathrow-Mumbai flight operated with a Boeing 777 aircraft on June 23. The cause for the illness is under probe.
Two of the passengers and crew members continued feeling the symptoms till landing and received medical attention after the aircraft landed. They were later discharged.
'On board flight AI130 from London Heathrow to Mumbai, five passengers and two crew reported feeling dizzy and nauseous during different phases of the flight. The flight landed safely in Mumbai, where our medical teams were ready to provide immediate medical assistance," said the spokesperson.
Meanwhile, civil aviation still remains under scrutiny following the Air India AI171 flight, which crashed in Ahmedabad earlier this month.
India witnessed one of its worst aviation tragedies on June 12 after a London-bound Air India plane, carrying 242 passengers and crew, including former Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, crashed into a medical college complex shortly after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport.
241 out of 242 passengers and crew members on board the Boeing 787-8 (AI 171) and 34 on the ground, were killed in the crash. The deceased include 120 men, 124 women, and 16 children.
One person survived the tragedy. The lone survivor was identified as Indian-origin British national Vishwash Kumar Ramesh who was returning to the UK with his brother Ajay Kumar Rakesh, 45, who was in a different row inside the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
The aircraft had 232 passengers and 10 crew members, including 169 Indians, 53 British nationals, seven Portuguese and a Canadian, on board.
First Published:
June 28, 2025, 14:52 IST
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