NEW DELHI: A door on a U.S. built Indian Airlines jet malfunctioned Monday as the plane flew Over northeast India, injuring at least two passengers due to depressurization of the aircraft, officials and reports said.
Though Indian Airlines officials denied the door opened on the Boeing 737200 the Press Trust of India reported the door opened twice and that four people sustained injuries in the incident over Agartala, the capital of jungle covered Tripura state, 935 miles northeast of New Delhi.
The domestic news service said the door first flapped open as the aircraft approached Agartala, and although crew members swiftly closed it, the four unidentified occupants received various injuries for which they were hospitalized.
The aircraft, one of the 27 owned by the main domestic carrier than took off for the nearby ‘Assamese capital of Guwqahati and the door again opened, forcing the pilot to return to Agartala the news service said.
Engineers inspected the door and apparently fixed it and the plane later flew to Guwahati without incident, the Press Trust reported.
But Indian Airlines spokesman A.K, Sivananadan in New Delhi denied the door had opened and reported that an unspecified technical problem with the door has caused the aircraft to depressurize leaving two people with slight injuries.
“The matter is under investigation,” Sivananadan said.
Indian Airlines recently has come under severe criticism for poor maintenance and service and for excessively flying its overstressed fleet to meet India’s booming domestic air market, which currently expanding at 14 percent a year.
The complaints were inspired in part, by two aircrafts crashes on Oct, 19, 1988, that killed 164 people in India’s worst day of civil aviation.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 5, 1989
