Flying from Addis Ababa to Mumbai, Ethiopian Airlines’ B787 Dreamliner made an emergency landing in the city on Friday. Upon experiencing a depressurisation problem mid-air, the flight had eight passengers who needed medical assistance after landing, as per reports.
As per media reports, the incident occurred on flight ET640 when the Dreamliner was flying over the Arabian Sea, cruising at 33,000 feet. The depressurisation warning led to a rapid decline in altitude as per FlightRadar24 data. Upon landing, seven passengers felt unwell and one has been hospitalised.
This comes just days after eleven flyers including six crew members felt dizzy and nauseous during Air India Heathrow-Mumbai flight on June 23. The Boeing 777 aircraft’s reason for causing such conditions with the people on board is under probe.
As per norm, all aircrafts are sealed and pressurised with conditioned air and oxygen. This makes the aircraft adaptable to higher altitudes with exponentially low oxygen levels. Marking one of such rare occasions when the systems do fail, the Ethiopian Airlines aircraft made an emergency landing in Mumbai.
With cabin pressure falling and oxygen dropping, it is speculated as per reports, that it may have caused panic among passengers. However, civil aviation still remains under scrutiny following the Air India AI171 flight, which crashed in Ahmedabad.
The London-bound flight crashed into a medical hostel seconds within take off. While a formal DGCA probe is underway, the black box data is yet to be analysed. The black box of the plane allows the officials to retrace the events and point out the cause of the crash.