In what could have been a disastrous landing, an Air India flight was involved in a hard landing incident in Dubai on December 20, but luckily nothing bad happened. The aircraft that suffered the forced landing was a 5.5-year-old Airbus A320neo (VT CIQ) which suffered no structural damage while making the forced landing (3.5 G) and came to a safe stop, TOI reported.

But the incident did not go well with the Air India government and the pilot flying the plane was relieved of duty pending the completion of the investigation. Meanwhile, the plane will remain grounded in Dubai for a week and undergo extensive checks before being allowed to fly back to Air India's technical base in Mumbai.

Flight tracking sites show that the plane flew to Mumbai on December 27 at a cruising altitude of less than 10,000 feet, indicating that it was an unpressurized ferry. This means that it returned home for repairs after receiving a landing that aircraft manufacturers allow after reviewing the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) in the airline's technical base as a "poor ferry flight (without passengers )".

An Air India spokesperson told TOI: "An investigation has already been initiated, as per DGCA norms. The pilot has been properly trained and licensed to fly the aircraft. He has been taken out of service until the process is completed. research and is being executed in accordance with standards.

The crash landing took place when the plane was operating as AI 933 from Kochi to Dubai. Flight tracking websites show that the next flight was to Mumbai on December 27. There have been no flights since then, according to flight tracking sites.

Experienced pilots who have been using the A320 for decades told TOI: “This aircraft performed a landing in Dubai that exceeded the manufacturer's landing gear structural limitation. It can cause significant damage to the landing gear structure. Depending on the age of the aircraft and metal fatigue, a young aircraft may survive that particular landing, but on subsequent landings the structural integrity may fail, leading to structural failure.”

Significant engineering investigations must be carried out before an aircraft that has made such a landing is released for future commercial passenger flights, to ensure its structural integrity is intact. Aircraft manufacturers often allow airlines to operate such aircraft on an "underpowered ferry back to a major engineering base" from where they may have been damaged during a forced landing after examining the digital flight data recorder ( DFDR), say the pilots.