India's Director General of Civil Aviation has ordered the immediate grounding of 11 Airbus A320neos fitted with Pratt & Whitney PW1100 engines following recent aborted take-offs and in-flight shutdowns. The note said that A320neos fitted with "PW engines beyond ESN 450" would be grounded with immediate effect. IndiGo and GoAir are known to use these engines.
"Hundreds of passengers were stranded after a number of flights were cancelled by both IndiGo and GoAir in the wake of some aircraft going out of operations due to the DGCA order", the Press Trust of India quoted a source as saying.
The pilot of flight 6E-244 was forced to turn back a little over 40 minutes after takeoff, making an emergency landing at 10.04am in Ahmedabad.
Indian airlines have hundreds of A320neo planes on order but they, among other carriers, are facing delivery delays due to problems with the engines.
Of these, 8 are operated by IndiGo and 3 by GoAir.
In February, the US aviation regulator said the Pratt & Whitney engines pose a shutdown risk, following similar action by European regulators that month.
The directive, which only applies to part of the airlines' A320neo fleet, became effective immediately and by Monday evening the aircraft had been taken out of service. It is different from the performance issues with the engine's carbon seal and combustion chamber witnessed by operators past year, which led to grounding of a number of aircraft. In an emailed statement to Bloomberg, the company said that it was working with its clients so that there is no disruption in operations and has already started delivering engines with the "upgraded configuration".
Choubey said the regulator has put in place enhanced safety checks and was satisfied with the measures with respect to the issue of oil chip detection - an issue that had plagued A320 neos powered by P&W engines.
On 13 February, the DGCA had said that it was monitoring engine glitches to ensure that safety is not compromised.