Air India said it was investigating an engine fire that forced a flight to land under emergency conditions in Delhi, marking the second safety incident involving its aircraft in a day.
The Thursday night flight from Bengaluru in southern India declared a “full emergency” after the cockpit crew received an alert indicating a possible engine fire as the aircraft was approaching Delhi.
Flight AI2802, an Airbus A320 carrying 171 passengers, eventually landed safely at the Delhi airport, the airline said.
Air India said the fire warning was later confirmed as genuine and the crew carried out an emergency landing in line with standard operating procedures.
“Air India is immediately initiating a full investigation into the cause of the incident in coordination with the relevant regulatory authorities,” it said.
The fire was extinguished after the plane landed at around 9.30pm and the aircraft was later towed away from the runway.
All the passengers were safely disembarked.
The incident came hours after an Air India aircraft was grounded following a tailstrike at the Bengaluru airport.
An airline spokesperson said the aircraft, an Airbus A321 arriving from Delhi, “experienced a tailstrike during landing” but came to a stop safely and all passengers and crew members disembarked normally.
A tailstrike occurs when the rear underside of an aircraft makes contact with the runway during takeoff or landing. In the wake of such incidents, aircraft are inspected for possible structural damage.
According to NDTV, a Boeing 747 had taken off shortly before the Air India flight landed, creating strong turbulence. The Air India flight’s pilots likely encountered unstable landing conditions and attempted a go-around, a standard procedure to abort a landing and try again. The tailstrike could have occurred during this process.
Air India, owned by the Tata Group, is going through turbulent times. The carrier has been facing mounting losses as well as legal and regulatory troubles since one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliners crashed last June, killing 241 of the 242 people on board and 19 on the ground in western India.
It has since been reprimanded by aviation regulators for a series of safety failings, including flying an aircraft eight times without an airworthiness certificate and operating planes without checking their emergency equipment.
In December 2025, the airline acknowledged a "need for urgent improvements in process discipline, communication, and compliance culture”.
