IndiGo plane’s stomach scrapes runway once more; aircraft grounded

An IndiGo Airbus A321’s fuselage scraped the runway throughout touchdown at Gorakhpur earlier this week, in keeping with trade sources, marking at the very least the eighth tail-strike incident involving the airline’s A321 fleet.

The plane has remained grounded for the reason that incident, which got here to mild in Gorakhpur on August 19. Its final recorded operation was a Delhi–Gorakhpur flight.

The plane concerned was an Airbus A321neo. Based on trade sources, that is at the very least the tenth tail-strike incident involving an IndiGo plane since 2023, with at the very least eight of those incidents involving A321s. One incident concerned the smaller-sized, regional plane, an ATR, and one other an A320. There isn’t a official knowledge obtainable on the variety of tail-strike incidents involving the airline.

The airline mentioned the plane aborted a touchdown, and made a touchdown on second try on August 19 whereas arriving in Gorakhpur from Delhi. It was subsequently grounded after “scratches have been discovered across the inlet of the auxiliary energy unit (APU)”, situated on the rear of the plane.

The A321 is especially vulnerable to tail strikes due to its longer fuselage and pilots have demanded {that a} thorough probe would assist recommend corrective motion to be taken to forestall future such incidents.

The Plane Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) took over the investigation into an IndiGo A321 tail strike in September 2024 after in depth injury to the underbelly of the plane after it scraped the runway in Delhi, landed there, went unnoticed and took off for Bengaluru. After the identical plane was concerned in one other tail strike on March 8, 2025 simply days after present process repairs, being made airworthy and return to flight companies, the AAIB informed The Hindu that it was launching a complete probe into all IndiGo A321 tail-strike incidents. Nevertheless, no findings from the probe have been made public to date, nor have studies been printed on the airline’s earlier tail-strike incidents. In January 2024, DGCA imposed a penalty of ₹30 lakh on IndiGo associated to the tail strikes after an audit discovered “systemic deficiencies” in “operations, coaching and engineering procedures”, in keeping with a DGCA assertion.

Earlier this yr, Airbus revised its Flight Crew Coaching Handbook to prescribe initiating the touchdown flare ( the nose-up pitching manoeuvre carried out simply earlier than landing ) at 40 ft for the A321, in contrast with 30 ft for different plane within the household, together with the A318, A319 and A320. IndiGo is Airbus’s largest buyer globally.