Ahmedabad, June 17 (IANS) An Air India flight, slated to leave the Ahmedabad airport for London, was cancelled on Tuesday, after a technical glitch was detected.

The airliner decided to call off the scheduled Ahmedabad-London flight after inputs were received about technical problems in the final hours before take-off.

The Air India Flight AI 159 was cancelled minutes before take-off. The plane with more than 200 passengers on board was slated to take off at 1 p.m. on Tuesday.

The development assumes significance as it comes days after Air India’s Dreamliner AI-171, also headed to London, crashed soon after take-off from the city airport on June 12, leading to more than 200 casualties.

The ill-fated plane that crashed into a medical college hostel near the hospital resulted in the death of more than 270 people, including 241 out of 242 passengers and some MBBS students.

The catastrophic Air India plane crash sent shockwaves across the aviation industry while leaving the entire nation shell-shocked, and also prompted multiple questions about the aircraft’s safety and management protocols.

After the devastating plane crash in Ahmedabad five days ago, multiple incidents of malfunction, technical snags and plane cancellations have been reported.

Early in the day, an Air India flight from San Francisco to Mumbai suffered a technical glitch in one of its engines and was briefly grounded for safety inspections. All passengers on the flight were asked to deplane at the Kolkata airport, where the flight had arrived for a layover.

A day ago, an Air India Express flight from Delhi to Ranchi was diverted back to the national capital soon after taking off, due to a suspected technical issue.

Before that, an Air India flight returned to Hong Kong after it reportedly developed technical issues mid-air.

The airline operator, however, said in a statement that the New Delhi-bound plane landed in Hong Kong safely and was undergoing checks “as a matter of abundant precaution”.

–IANS

mr/dpb