The past few weeks haven’t been good for Air India. Apart from the delay in opening up of Pakistan airspace completely which has meant longer flights, technical stops and so-on adding to the ever-growing losses, Air India is facing maintenance issues with their fleet.

Last week, two London Heathrow – Mumbai flights were delayed back to back. One of them was operated by a 777-300ER, VT-ALX, which got delayed for over 47 hours. Apart from these two flights, there was an issue with a 787-8 which was to operate Bengaluru-London Heathrow-Ahmedabad which led to a delay of around 20 hours on that flight.

Air India’s Delhi-San Francisco route is its longest route yet. The 9x weekly route is operated by 3 Boeing 777-200LRs (VT-ALF/G/H) that Air India has in its fleet. Sometimes a 777-300ER is also rostered in place of the 777-200LR. On June 2, 2019, VT-ALH operated AI 183 from Delhi to San Francisco.

On landing in San Francisco, during a walk around inspection on arrival, the damage was observed in the bottom right corner of door L2.

According to an Air India spokesman,

The 777 aircraft, VT-ALH, arrived in SFO as AI 183. During a walk around inspection on arrival, a small cut/crack on the bottom right corner of left side 2 entry door was observed. Air India is trying to get help from the local aircraft maintenance repair agencies. The return San Francisco – Delhi flight VT-ALH was to operate with 210 passengers as AI 184 has been cancelled. 50 flyers of AI 184 have been flown on our other flight to Delhi, AI 174; 50 have been sent on other airlines; 25-30 have cancelled. The other passengers are deciding what to do next.

As reported by Times of India, a senior Air India engineering official said,

As of now whatever I am saying is prima facie and preliminary. The aircraft door was not damaged before departure from Delhi. Engineering did not do any work on this door. Aircraft boarding in Delhi took place using an aerobridge so no question of this being damaged before departure. But there is a damage and we are investigating where and how could this have taken place. There is no report of hissing sound coming from the door and there was no cabin de-pressurisation.

Air India requires 3 777-200LR to maintain its current 9x weekly Delhi-San Francisco schedule. AI 173/4 is 6x weekly and requires 2 77Ls whereas AI 183/4 is 3x weekly and requires 1 77L.

With VT-ALH now stuck at San Francisco, and the delay in opening up of Pakistan’s airspace which has increased aircraft utilisation and adding to this the grounding of a few 777-300ER and 787-8 for quite a few months, it is difficult for Air India to keep up with the schedule.

For now, it looks like Air India is trying to mitigate by delaying AI 183 unless it can fix VT-ALH as soon as possible or find a spare 77W to maintain the schedule.

This is a very strange case and no one has been able to find out yet what really happened in this case. A big crack/hole/whatever you want to call it on the door in-flight appears out of nowhere after all.

How and when do you think the crack/bent developed? Any theories?