But, then 400 feet was better than 200 feet, and at least we could see something and align our aircraft (to the runway)," said captain Vikas. “Ideally we would have liked the cloud ceiling to be at 700 feet. The pilots continued to seek the ‘latest’ weather report from ATC who informed them that the cloud ceiling at Newark airport, which is about 51.5 km away from JFK airport, had risen to 400 feet from 200 feet earlier. “Options of doing other approaches played in my mind, but it didn’t come up in our discussions since the stress was too much and we were already under fatigue after flying for 15 hours," said captain Palia. While the pilots worked upon the best course of action, captain Palia did consider other options like using RNAV (utilizing GPS that enables a pilot to guide his aircraft to a landing in low visibility situations) but the pilots didn’t have any time to go through the charts with low fuel and fatigue also setting in. At that point, when we were deciding what to do, ATC told us that there is nothing in the vicinity with cloud base over 600 feet," captain Palia said. “We needed an airport with cloud base of over 600 feet to do an approach using LNAV and VNAV. Meanwhile, AI 101 was separated from other traffic, while the pilots started to urgently work on the issue. “After such a long flight, we just had fuel to reach our primary alternate, Newark, and the secondary alternate, Stewart (New York Stewart International Airport), and half an hour of holding fuel," captain Palia said. Suggestions were offered for a few alternate airports, with a higher cloud base, which, however, had to be left out with fuel stocks running low. The pilots were constantly seeking latest weather updates from the ATC at JFK to decide on an alternate airport nearby for landing. An aircraft flying at lower altitude consumes more fuel than one flying at a higher altitude. After its non-stop flight from New Delhi, the plane was left with about 7.3 tonnes of fuel, or one hour of fuel, after executing a ‘go around’, which burnt as much as two tonnes of fuel.
The pilots were now faced with another serious issue: fast depleting fuel. “The ATC asked us to do an auto landing (using ILS), which we said was not an option," captain Palia said, adding, “In the meantime, we were trying to figure out alternate airports with a better cloud base for landing." The crew also noticed flash warnings about some problem with the landing gear, which fortunately turned out to be a false alarm.Īs AI 101 continued and stabilized on its approach, the crew decided to do a ‘go around’ of JFK as it was too risky to land with a non-functioning ILS with a cloud ceiling of 200 feet. A non-precision approach using Lateral Navigation (LNAV) and Vertical Navigation (VNAV), which takes data from GPS (global positioning system) to know the location of the aircraft, was not an option since it required a much higher cloud base of 650-700 feet. While approaching JFK, the pilots realized that the Boeing’s landing system had gone kaput-just three to four minutes from the airport -Īs the cloud base was close to 200 feet, captain Palia and crew couldn’t use a non-precision approach, or a landing that doesn’t utilize electronic glide path guidance. The TCAS (Traffic collision avoidance system), a system designed to reduce mid-air collisions, had also failed. The protocol required the four pilots, incidentally all from Mumbai, to be present in the cockpit during landing.Ĭaptain Palia and his team, while doing an approach for the airport, realized that the Boeing’s Instrument Landing system (ILS) had gone kaput, while it was about three to four minutes from the airport. Inside the cockpit were commander Rustom Palia, and first officer captain Vikas, as well as captain Sushant Singh and captain D.S. For any other aircraft, whose systems were running perfectly, it wouldn’t have been a problem. The skies over New York were overcast and the cloud ceiling was just about 200 feet. NTSB did not respond to an email seeking comments.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent US government accident investigation agency, is likely to investigate the incident as well. We are investigating the issue and will take action," the official said. “We can only speculate the reasons that could have led to this kind of multi-instrument failure. The report of the investigation, which will not be made available publically, should be out shortly, said an airline spokesperson.Ī senior Air India official, who spoke to Mint on condition of anonymity, said engineers had deemed the 777-300 fit to fly to New York. Air India is conducting an internal investigation into the incident.
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