Tue, Oct 18, 2005
Boeing 737 Remained At End Of Runway For Four Days
The Air Sahara Boeing 737 that blocked traffic on the main
runway at Mumbai, India's international airport could have been
moved sooner -- but airport officials had no guarantee from the
airline that it would pay for freeing the aircraft from the soft
dirt in which it was stuck.
As Aero-News reported last week, the Air Sahara
737 skidded off the end of the runway and became mired in the soft
earth there. It remained at the end of the runway for four days
before some 200 workers and several rail cars were used to move the
aircraft back onto the tarmac.
"We did not know if Air Sahara would pay us for recovering the
disabled aircraft as no authority from Sahara approached us with
the required go-ahead," Air-India airport manager, Vidya Lokhande
told the Mumbai Mid-Day News.
"After the skid, Air Sahara officials wrongly assumed that the
removal of the aircraft was a responsibility of the Airport
Authority of India. Actually, according to International Civil
Aviation Organisation rules the recovery of a disabled aircraft is
the sole responsibility of the airline," another airport official
told the Mid-Day News.
Dozens of flights were delayed up to several hours while the 737
sat at the end of the runway. Passengers became so fed up that a
sort of lynch mob formed on Thursday, intent on getting some
answers from India's transport minister. Hearing that a crowd was
looking for him, the minister surreptitiously ducked out a back
door at the airport.
Finally, someone at Air Sahara apparently wised up to the
situation. "Air Sahara had to promise us a payment of nearly Rs 40
lakh for removal of the aircraft. We had to be certain where the
money was going to come from," Lokhande said.
Her remarks were later disavowed by Air India. Another
unidentified spokeswoman told the Mid-Day News, "Air-India did its
best to in the given conditions and finally removed the
aircraft."
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