Pilot body demands grounding of Air India's B-787s over technical failures

The Federation of Indian Pilots highlighted two recent incidents when the aircraft suffered serious systems' failures, including deployment of the emergency turbine motor in one case

The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) on Friday demanded the Civil Aviation Ministry ground the entire fleet of Air India’s Boeing 787s, popularly known as Dreamliners, following at least two incidents of technical issues involving the aircraft. The first incident involved a Vienna-Delhi flight, while the other occurred on an Amritsar-Birmingham flight. Dreamliners are typically used for long-haul flights.

Technical malfunctions with Dreamliners

Highlighting issues with the Dreamliners fleet, the FIP, a flight safety advocacy group that represents around 5,000 pilots across India, said that Air India’s flight AI-154, flying from Vienna to Delhi, was diverted to Dubai after major technical issues were detected on October 4.

 

According to the FIP’s letter to Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu, the plane autopilot suddenly stopped working, triggering a cascading failure of other instrumentation systems.

 

"The aircraft experienced failures across critical systems which included Autopilots, ILS (Instrument Landing System), Flight Directors (FDs), and Flight Control System degradation with no Autoland capability. The pilots could not engage the autopilots due to electrical malfunctions; thus, the pilots were constrained to fly manually at night and divert to Dubai,” the pilots' body said in its statement.

 

“Moreover, the FDs were not available with degraded flight control systems," it added.

 

In a separate incident on October 4, the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) was deployed on Amritsar-Birmingham AI-117 while landing. The RAT is a small turbine motor on an aircraft that provides emergency power if the main engines or generators fail.

 

The Boeing 787 fleet has been under scrutiny since the crash of Air India’s flight AI-171 on June 12, 2025, in Ahmedabad, which killed 260 people. In that instance, too, the RAT had deployed almost immediately after take-off, signalling a critical engine failure.  

 

Demands for technical investigation

 

In its letter to the minister, FIP said that since June 16, it has been continuously demanding a thorough technical investigation into the aircrafts' electrical systems.

 

"There is a need to check the MEL (Minimum Equipment List) releases and repetitive snags on the aircraft, especially B-787s," FIP said, seeking a special audit of Air India itself, which operates 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.

 

FIP also demanded an investigation into the two incidents involving AI117 and AI154.

Other major incidents involving Dreamliners

Technical issues with Dreamliners have been reported in other countries as well.

 

For example, according to media reports, on June 16, 2025, an Air India Boeing 787-8 (flight AI-315) returned to Hong Kong about 90 minutes after takeoff due to a “technical issue".

 

In another incident last year, on March 11, 2024, a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787-9 flying from Sydney to Santiago fell about 300 feet in a matter of seconds two hours into the flight, leaving dozens of passengers with injuries as they were thrown from their seats and sending objects flying across the plane.

 

(With inputs from PTI)