Thai Lion Air flight to Bangkok cancelled in Kolkata following technical snag

A Thai Lion Air flight to Bangkok was grounded at the Kolkata airport in the early hours of Saturday after it developed technical glitches, officials said.

The flight with 130 passengers and seven crew on board returned to the parking bay from the runway, they said.

The Boeing 737-800 aircraft landed at the Kolkata airport around 1.23 am with 151 passengers on board and was supposed to take off at 2.35 am for Bangkok’s Don Mueang International Airport (DMK), they said.

However, it developed a flap-related problem, following which it returned to the parking bay after pushback and subsequently, the flight had to be cancelled, they added.

“Flaps are very important components of an aircraft. The flaps are extended during take-off to produce lift for the aircraft. Similarly, they are extended during landing to create drag to slow down the aircraft,” Sumanta Roy Choudhury, a retired captain who worked in multiple airlines, told PTI.

All the passengers were provided with hotel accommodation, an airline official said.

The aircraft had to be grounded in Kolkata as the company engineer on board could not solve the technical problem. Two more engineers will be flown in on Saturday night from the airline’s base in Bangkok, and they will help in fixing the problem, he added.

As a result of this incident, a Qatar Airways plane from Doha to Kolkata got delayed for parking by 25 minutes, an Airports Authority of India official said.

India