Mumbai: An Air India flight from Chennai to Mumbai was diverted to Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) on Monday afternoon and passengers were given the option of disembarking to continue their journey by road. About six hours later, the aircraft took off from NMIA and landed at its scheduled destination — Mumbai airport.AI flight AI640 departed Chennai around 11.20am and about 90 minutes later, it entered a holding pattern, did one orbit near Raigad before proceeding to Mumbai, where it descended to 725ft and carried out a missed approach (aborted landing), according to flightradar24 data. The aircraft climbed to divert to Navi Mumbai, where it landed 25 minutes later.Sources said the IndiGo 6E 6523 flight from Mangaluru, which touched down earlier at Mumbai airport, had reported a bird hit, which is probably why the AI flight had to divert. A runway inspection for foreign object debris is typically carried out following a bird hit.Sources said the AI pilots cited “minimum diversion fuel (MDF)” as the reason for diverting to NMIA. “With only MDF left, the pilots appear to have followed the standard procedure and diverted to the alternative airport,” a source said.An alternative airport is the pre-designated back-up airport where an aircraft heads to if it becomes inadvisable to land at the intended destination. When fuel reserves in an aircraft reach the MDF point, the pilots must divert to the designated alternate airport in order to land with the mandatory final reserve.“The AI aircraft had done only one orbit and one missed approach when it reached MDF level. Airlines typically carry more fuel than that,” the source said, adding that the aircraft that came in to land at Mumbai before this AI aircraft too carried out a missed approach/aborted landing. But after holding, it returned and landed at Mumbai on the second attempt.Sources added that the IndiGo bird hit was a “minor” incident; the aircraft was cleared for flights soon after.Air India did not comment.
