Rajiv Gandhi International Airport - Incidents and Accidents

Incidents and Accidents

• On the airport's opening morning, a SpiceJet Airlines flight landed 50 minutes ahead of schedule, making it the first flight to ever land at the new airport. This took many of the officials aback, most of whom were waiting for the scheduled "first flight" from Lufthansa, which was set to be the first flight to land at the new airport. SpiceJet flight SG 397 from Ahmedabad to Hyderabad was scheduled to land at 12.50 am, but it touched down at 12.01 am because "the pilot decided to take off early". Airport officials were puzzled by SpiceJet's explanation that their pilots had decided to take off early though the management had agreed to fly in late. The American expat captain of SG 397 affirms that he departed from Ahmedabad at the exact time dictated by dispatch and has the flight schedule to prove it. Scheduled arrival was 12:20 am. Actual arrival was 12:15 am, only 5 minutes early. Again, these times were set by dispatch the previous day. But it was Lufthansa that arrived from Frankfurt at 12.19 am, six minutes ahead of its scheduled time, which got the official welcome as it was planned to be given to the German plane, though it was the third, as another SpiceJet plane had landed 5 minutes after flight 397.
• Also on the airport's opening morning, KLM Flight 873 inbound from Amsterdam was supposed to land at HIA, but reports indicated that KLM was unaware of the airport change, and the pilots, confused, decided to divert to New Delhi. After they were denied landing at Indira Gandhi International Airport, they diverted to Mumbai, where they made a successful landing However, KLM denies this, saying that instead, the diversion was due to the weather being below minimum limits for landing. This is due to an observant reader of an article about the diversion who contacted Hyderabad ATC and then realised that it was the weather.
• The airport validated its capability to land Airbus A380 aircraft when on 16 June 2011, a Dubai bound Emirates Airlines flight, EK-413 Airbus A-380 was diverted to Hyderabad as an Australian citizen required emergency medical assistance. The aircraft landed at around 4.20 am and left at 6.30 am after the passenger was shifted. On 23 October 2011, a Dubai bound Emirates Airlines flight from Bangkok was forced into landing under emergency conditions following technical problems. All 410 passengers on board the aircraft were disembarked safely.