Kozhikode: An Airbus A-321 aircraft of Air India, which had its engine damaged after a toddy cat got sucked into it, resumed normal service on Thursday. The aircraft which was taken out of service on December 8 after the incident took off from Karipur International airport at 10.15am carrying 140 passengers to Dubai.
However the task of getting the damaged aircraft back in the skies gave the national carrier one of its toughest logistics and operational challenges in recent history.
In a transcontinental operation, an USD 7.5 million (Rs 40 crore) CFM-56 engine was brought from Mumbai on Wednesday in a special cargo flight chartered from Moscow. The remaining engine parts, including fitments and main frame, had to the trucked from Mumbai to Karipur. An 15-member engineering team was brought in to do the repair work, which took 18 days to complete.
An Ilyushin IL- 76 heavy freighter aircraft belonging to Volga Dnepr airlines with nine Russian crew on board brought the engine on Wednesday evening. In an overnight operation, the engineering wing of Air India mounted the new engine by 3am enabling the aircraft to resume normal operations at 10am.
28/12/12 KR Rajeev/Times of India
