by Donald Wood
Last updated: 12:47 PM ET, Thu July 27, 2017
Air India officials have announced the airline has grounded two pilots after they forgot to retract the landing gear of their plane during a domestic flight last week.
According to the Times of India, Air India Flight AI 676 was en route from Kolkata to Mumbai when the aircraft was forced to divert to Nagpur after it ran low on fuel. The landing gear being down caused the plane to fly low and burn more fuel, which resulted in the diversion.
The Airbus A-320 had 99 passengers on board at the time of the incident.
When the two female pilots decided to make the landing at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport in Nagpur, they realized the landing gear had been down the whole time, causing the issues that forced the diversion.
Air India spokesperson Dhananjay Kumar said the airline was investigating the incident and had taken the two pilots off flying duty.
"This lapse shows extremely poor situational awareness and complete breakdown of crew resource management between both women pilots on that flight," a senior commander at Air India said in a statement.
"The post-take off check list includes checking if the landing gear has been retracted. They realized the landing gears were down only while preparing to land at Nagpur after running low on fuel. In such poor situational awareness, it is a miracle that they realized the plane is running low on fuel."
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Officials from Air India are also surprised the cabin crew and passengers did not issue complaints about the noise and vibrations that the landing gear would have caused during the flight.
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