There was a stir in Air India flight AI-117 going from Amritsar to Birmingham when the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) installed under the plane opened automatically during the flight. This incident happened on October 4, when the plane was coming down for landing. The good thing was that the plane landed safely without any problem and all the passengers remained safe.
Now the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has sought a complete report from the Boeing Company on this matter and has given strict instructions to Air India for investigation. DGCA has said that such sudden opening of RAT is unusual, because this system is activated only when the aircraft’s electrical or hydraulic system fails, but nothing like this happened in this flight.
What did Air India tell?
According to Air India, everything was normal during the flight. The pilots did not receive any alert of any system failure or malfunction. The company has said that the plane was immediately grounded after landing and a thorough investigation is being done. Air India says that neither any fault was found in the system nor there was any fault of the pilot.
DGCA has asked Boeing as to how the RAT was activated without any glitch. Air India has also been asked to inspect all the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft in its fleet, especially those aircraft in which the Power Conditioning Module (PCM) has been recently replaced.
What did DGCA say?
DGCA suspects that there may be some connection between the changes in this module and the automatic opening of the RAT. Now talking about RAT, it is actually a small fan-like turbine which is installed below the aircraft. Its work starts when all the electrical and hydraulic systems of the aircraft are shut down.
Then it rotates due to air pressure and generates electricity so that the control systems of the aircraft can remain operational. That is, it is a completely emergency backup system but in AI-117 flight it opened automatically without any need, which is considered to be a very rare incident. After this incident, a pilot organization named Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) has demanded DGCA to investigate all Boeing 787 aircraft.
Civil Aviation Minister took cognizance of the incident
The organization says that if systems like RAT start activating automatically then it can become a big threat to flight safety. Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu has also taken cognizance of this incident. He has said that DGCA will conduct a thorough investigation and get to the bottom of what was the reason for the automatic opening of the RAT.
According to ANI, at present Air India has started checking all the Dreamliner flights of its fleet so that this does not happen again in future. Regarding the safety of passengers, the company has assured that all the planes are completely safe and there is no danger.
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