Third Time’s the Charm? Air India’s Airbus A320 Gets Stuck Again!

by Gary Leff

Air India planes just don’t have an easy time getting decommissioned. Several years ago they tried to move an old Airbus A320 to a training facility and decided to use a crane that apparently couldn’t withstand the weight of an aircraft.

It seems Air India had never done this before. They discovered for the first time in real world conditions that the 200 ton crane they had selected for the job wasn’t suitable for moving a 70 ton aircraft. The crane’s arm snapped.

Then in 2021 a retired Air India Airbus A320 got stuck under a bridge at the Delhi-Gurugram highway near the Delhi airport. Traffic backed up behind the stuck aircraft.

Fast forward to Friday and the same thing happened again. And to another Airbus A320. (HT: Enilria)

The fuselage of a retired Airbus A320 got stuck under a bridge in the Eastern Indian city of Motihari while heading to Mumbai. People gathered near the bridge to watch the precariously perched plane while several tried to figure out how to get it unlodged and vehicles backed up along the highway.

If a single Airbus A320 was misjudged by a single truck driver or crane operator, acting alone, we could chalk that up to that’s what insurance is for. But these aren’t – or at least shouldn’t be – operations planned by a single individual. Even a 34 year old narrowbody aircraft fuselage headed to the boneyard is worth measuring for height, and checking the heights of bridges along the planned route before ploughing ahead.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  3. Is this something the airlines would usually do in-house? I’d presume that retirement / movement of old aircraft would be contracted out. I wouldn’t be quick to blame the airline.

  5. As ‘some DutchGuy’ said above, LET THE AIR OUT OF THE TIRES! Not exactly rocket science.

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