Monday 10 September 2012

Timely act helps avoid mishap at Kochi airport

KOCHI: Timely intervention of airport engineers helped avert a major accident at the Cochin International Airport Limited (Cial) on Thursday. The technicians identified snag in the brake assembly system of a SriLankan Airlines flight (UL-166), which operates in the Kochi-Colombo sector. The hitch was rectified and the flight, which was delayed by three hours, left with 150 passengers on board to Colombo at 12.55pm.
The Cial engineers noticed that some parts of the brake unit were falling off even as the flight was entering the apron of the airport, an area where aircraft are parked, refuelled and boarded. "We immediately brought it to the notice of the captain and the flight was taken to the bay," a Cial official said. Since there was oil leakage too, the fire fighting team at the airport was kept on standby. "Later the oil was washed off using fire engines," the official said. The Cial officials also sent the description of the glitches in the aircraft to the air safety department officials of SriLankan Airlines in Colombo. The flight crew were then asked to continue the journey after deactivating the brake assembly system. The flight landed safely at the Colombo airport at 2.01pm. "It took just 30 minutes for our engineers to replace the damaged system," officials with the Kochi office of the airlines said.

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