india

Updated: Apr 26, 2019 23:52 IST

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday initiated a probe after Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted that “engine trouble” in his chartered flight from New Delhi to Patna forced him to return to the national capital.

A DGCA team is inspecting the aircraft and collecting data from the recorder to ascertain the possible cause of the incident. The Hawker 850 XP chartered plane is owned by Forum 1 Aviation.

“We have sent two officers to inspect the plane and investigate the matter,” a DGCA official said.

Gandhi also posted a 21-second video along with the tweet, which showed the pilots manoeuvring the small plane. “Engine trouble on our flight to Patna today! We’ve been forced to return to Delhi. Today’s [election] meetings in Samastipur (Bihar), Balasore (Odisha) & Sangamner (Maharashtra) will run late. Apologies for the inconvenience,” Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

Congress declined to comment on the issue.

The flight took off from Delhi around 9.30 am and landed safely at 10.21am, according to officials in the air traffic control room. One of the officials said the pilots informed them about the snag in the plane and requested a priority landing after the technical glitch.

A DGCA team also reached the Delhi airport after they received the information about the plane.

A Forum 1 Aviation executive said that the aviation regulator is probing the matter and there seems to be no serious issue with the aircraft.

Gandhi faced a similar situation ahead of the Karnataka assembly election last year when an aircraft flying him to Hubballi suffered snag mid-air after its auto-pilot system failed. The Congress party had then complained to the state police, alleging that the incident raised questions of “intentional tampering to endanger the life of passengers”. The DGCA in its report said that the “‘incident was survivable”.