On September 27th, an Air India Airbus A319 was forced to divert to Kolkata airport following a shutdown of the right hand engine. The aircraft was flying from Gaya, India to Yangon, Myanmar when the incident occurred.
According to The Aviation Herald, the aircraft was performing flight AI233 with 33 passengers and eight crew onboard. The plane was roughly 110nm northwest of Kolkata, India when the crew made the decision to shut the right hand engine down. 25 minutes after shutting the engine down, the aircraft made a safe landing in Kolkata.
The occurrence aircraft remained on the ground in Kolkata for more than 34 hours after landing. According to FlightRadar24, the aircraft is scheduled to perform flight AI409 from Delhi to Patna tomorrow at 10:50 am local time. This suggests that the aircraft has been repaired and will be back in service as of tomorrow.
About the aircraft
The aircraft involved is an Airbus A319-100. According to The Aviation Herald, the particular aircraft is registered VT-SCV and is a nearly 10-year-old aircraft. It has been with Air India since coming out of the factory in 2009. This particular aircraft uses CFM-56 engines. Unfortunately, no additional information is available regarding the particular problem with the engine.
According to Wikipedia, the Airbus A319 has two engine options. Firstly, there is CFM with its CFM56. Secondly, we have International Aero Engines with the V2500.
According to Air India's website, the airline owns 19 Airbus A319 aircraft and dry leases three more. The three that are dry leases are noted as being single configuration cabins. Air India's overall fleet includes a mix of widebody, narrowbody and turboprop aircraft. The airline still has Boeing 747s but also 18 777s. Its smallest aircraft are ATR42s and ATR72s.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, there is little information regarding this incident and we would rather not speculate on what might be wrong with the engine. However, we can say that whatever the problem was, the crew made the right decision in diverting to the nearest airport.
In August, a Smartwings Boeing 737 continued to fly two hours towards its destination after it discovered that it had an engine issue. This decision and move was heavily criticized by many as an engine failure checklist requires aircraft to divert to the closest airport immediately. In the case of the Smartwings flight, the aircraft continued flying despite numerous suitable airports along the way.
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We have reached out to Air India for an official statement or comment. However, at the time of publishing, we have yet to hear back. We will be sure to update this post if anything is received.