An under-maintenance aircraft of Air India that was being readied for a flight to San Francisco caught fire at a parking bay of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) Wednesday night.
The aircraft was scheduled to fly at 3.30am Thursday and it finally departed with 248 people onboard after a delay of six hours.
According to airport officials, the incident took place around 8.30pm. “The aircraft, a Boeing777-200LR, was undergoing a routine maintenance check when a glitch led to an auto shutdown of the auxiliary power unit (APU) — a small jet engine housed in the tail of the aircraft. Because of this, there was an oil leak and when the airline engineers restarted the APU, it caught fire,” an airport official, not authorised to speak to the media, said.
