Full emergency declared at Thiruvananthapuram airport, here's why

A full emergency was declared at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in Kerala on Friday for the safe landing of an Air India Express flight which had taken off from Kozhikode. The emergency was declared after a Dammam-bound Air India Express flight suffered a tail strike during take off from Kozhikode. 

The Air India Express flight IX 385 on Kozhikode-Dammam route was diverted to the Thiruvananthapuram airport due to the suspected tail strike. The flight had 168 on board. The aircraft eventually made a “normal safe landing”. All passengers were safely deplaned. A video of the emergency landing surfaced:

#WATCH | Dammam bound Air India Express flight from Calicut diverted to Thiruvananthapuram due to technical reasons lands safely at the airport. A full emergency was declared at the Thiruvananthapuram airport for the landing of this flight pic.twitter.com/22EunuU0n5 — ANI (@ANI) February 24, 2023

“There were 168 passengers on board, and the aircraft made a normal safe landing at Thiruvananthapuram at 12.15PM and passengers deplaned," Air India Express said in a statement. 

“We are making arrangements to send the passengers to Dammam by an alternate flight which is scheduled to take off from Thiruvananthapuram at 3.30 PM today," the statement added.

The incident comes after a Kozhikode-bound flight of the same airline from Abu Dhabi was forced to turn back on February 4 and land at the Abu Dhabi airport after fire was detected in one of the aircraft engines shortly after takeoff. 

Earlier on January 23, another Air India Express flight, on Trivandrum-Muscat route, developed a technical glitch in its flight management system (FMS) and had to return to land after 45 minutes from takeoff.