Dreamliner snag leaves 250 Holi revellers stranded in Paris

NEW DELHI: The Boeing 787 Dreamliner's unending snags have now poured cold water on the Holi celebration plans of almost 250 people who were supposed to fly out of Paris late on Saturday night to reach Delhi Sunday morning, in time for the festival of colours.
Air India's flight AI 142, to be operated on Dreamliner (VT-AND), had to be grounded just when it was to take off from Paris CDG Airport on Saturday night as the aircraft's spoilers -- speed retardation devices on the wings that move up and down -- became unserviceable and the aircraft had to be grounded.
"There were 236 passengers on the flight (almost a full load as AI Dreamliners have a seating capacity of 256). The aircraft had to be grounded due to spoiler snag. The passengers have been sent to hotels and will be flown to Delhi at the earliest," said an AI official.
Spoiler troubles have been endemic for the Dreamliners, like many other problems like transponder failures. In mid-February a Delhi-Frankfurt flight had to be cancelled at the last minute due to spoiler trouble. And in January, another AI dreamliner was grounded in Hong Kong for the same reason.
A spoiler acts as a speed breaker on an aircraft and its actuators make it go up or down on wing tips during takeoff to alter drag and during landing to increase rate of descent. Without this important device perfectly functional, an airplane simply can't be allowed to get airborne.
AI CMD Rohit Nandan very sternly raised the issue of Dreamliner's constant snags with Boeing vice-president Dinesh Keskar at last week's recent Hyderabad air show. The exasperated airline has gone to the extent of asking Boeing to be answerable for each snag.
"The Dreamliner troubles lead to flight delays and cancellations due to which passengers suffer a lot. We as an airline also suffer financial losses as the passengers have to be put up in hotels abroad. AI gets a bad name for no fault of its as the Dreamliner's teething troubles are continuing way past its infancy stage," said an official.
Nandan is reportedly learnt to have asked Boeing to station its personnel in India and explain each and every fault that leads to grounding of Dreamliners. "Whenever there is a B-787 problem, the media rightly calls AI to know why it happened. The answers for that are with Boeing and they better explain the same as our focus at times like those are to minimize passenger suffering. We are getting a lot of flak because of Boeing," said an official.
Attempts to reach Boeing for getting their version on the endemic problems of the Dreamliners, each time a snag grounds, delays or leads to return of an aircraft mid-way from destination, prove futile.
However, both Boeing and airlines say the issues with the B-787 have no bearing on safety.