Dreamliner lets down Air India again

Air India ran into more problems on Friday with its snag-prone Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet letting down the maharajah yet again.

The national carrier was forced to cancel its Melbourne-Delhi flight due to clogged toilets of the Dreamliner plane while its Singapore-Chennai flight was delayed by over six hours as another Dreamliner could not take off after engineers detected a technical problem. Many passengers of the Melbourne-Delhi flight AI-301 were given hotel accommodation, while some others were put on other flights after the cancellation.

The airline also had to arrange a team of alternative crew members as the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) for those already on board had come to an end. Flight AI-347 from Singapore reached Chennai around 6 pm on Friday instead of its scheduled arrival time of 10.50 am, an airline official confirmed. Friday's twin incidents involving Dreamliners came close on the heels of another incident involving a Dreamliner flying from Delhi to London on Thursday which had to return to the national capital due to problems with its airconditioning system after three hours.

Last week, another Dreamliner developed a crack in the windshield and had to be grounded. Air India has reported more than 370 glitches in its Dreamliner planes so far. Such glitches have meant it affects its on-time performance. Currently, a total of 134 Dreamliners are in service with 16 carriers worldwide.

The recurrent problems with the Dreamliners is understood to have figured during the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Boeing CEO W. James McNerney on September 29 in Washington. Air India chairman Rohit Nandan was also in Washington during Modi's meeting, after which McNerney told reporters that Boeing wanted to step up its engagement with India. The national carrier and the plane maker are negotiating a formula for compensation for grounding of the Dreamliners for almost four months last year over battery fires.