A parked aircraft of an Indian budget airline was grounded on Tuesday after an unmanned vehicle rolled across the tarmac and collided with its engine at Kolkata’s busy Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose international airport.
According to initial accounts, the third-party catering vehicle struck the engine of the stationary IndiGo aircraft at about 9.30pm at parking bay 51 at the airport in the eastern city, where the plane had been waiting ahead of its scheduled departure.
While the visible damage appeared limited at first, engineers have since begun detailed checks to assess the full extent of the impact.
In a statement shared with the media, IndiGo said: “A third-party unmanned vehicle on the apron moved and came in contact with a parked IndiGo aircraft.
“We will be closely working with the authorities to investigate this.
“The aircraft was scheduled to operate flight 6E 6663 from Kolkata to Guwahati. An alternate aircraft has been arranged to operate the flight,” Indigo said. An apron is an area where aircraft are parked, loaded, refuelled, and serviced.
The airline added that the aircraft has been grounded for inspection and maintenance before it can return to service.
There were no passengers or crew on board at the time of the incident, and no injuries have been reported.
However, it remains unclear how the vehicle began moving without a driver, with authorities now examining possible lapses in ground safety procedures.
The Independent has reached out to IndiGo for comment.
Tuesday’s incident comes months after the airline faced massive scrutiny over the cancellation of thousands of its flights in December. The airline, which controls roughly 65 per cent of the domestic aviation market, cancelled 4,500 flights in December in what was the biggest crisis in its 20-year history, with the delays affecting more than a million passengers.
Tuesday’s incident is also not the first. In February, two aircraft – IndiGo’s 6E 791 and Air India’s AI 2732 – collided on the taxiway at the airport in the western city of Mumbai, though all passengers were unharmed.
In another incident last August, an IndiGo Airbus A321’s tail touched the runway, reportedly due to adverse weather conditions. More recently, a Turkish Airlines flight carrying 236 passengers made an emergency landing at Kolkata airport.
In a separate incident, a Kathmandu-bound flight was also forced to land in Kolkata after its right engine caught fire mid-air.
