5 MPs write to Speaker over ‘breach of privilege’ by Air India

Five MPs, including KC Venugopal of the Congress, wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on Tuesday over a “frighteningly close to tragedy” incident aboard the Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi flight they were travelling in on August 10 and the plane being diverted to Chennai after a critical technical fault and failure of its weather radar.

Venugopal and party colleagues K Suresh, Adoor Prakash and Robert Bruce, along with CPM's K Radhakrishnan demanded action on alleged "breach of privilege" by Air India.

They also wrote to Civil Aviation Minister Rammohan Naidu and demanded an immediate investigation into the incident.

“Midway through the flight, the pilot announced a critical technical fault, failures of the weather radar and declared that the aircraft would be diverted to Chennai. This raised concerns since other airports such as Bengaluru and Coimbatore were closer to our location at the time. The decision to proceed to a farther airport while allegedly ‘flying blind’ remains unexplained,” Venugopal wrote.

Air India on Monday had said the crew of the Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi flight that was diverted to Chennai on Sunday followed the protocols and the first landing attempt had to be aborted due to suspected foreign debris presence on the runway amid safety concerns raised by some MPs who were on board the aircraft.