NEW DELHI: The directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) has launched a probe into the emergency landing of a Mumbai-Delhi GoAir flight at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Thursday evening after a near-fatal nose wheel fault.

GoAir, on its part, has approached the manufacturer and also suspended an engineer for giving the aircraft take-off clearance.

A senior DGCA official told DNA the left nose wheel of A-320 fell off mid-air immediately after the aircraft carrying close to 123 passengers took off from Mumbai.

"I don't want to go into the details but the aircraft landed in Delhi without left nose wheel. The airline has been asked to explain its sloppy repair work," he said.

DGCA has issued a fresh advisory to all airlines about mandatory technical checks before takeoffs and landings. A team of officials has been dispatched to Mumbai to find out whether the airlines committed any procedural errors.

Airport sources said the aircraft had undergone a nose wheel repair in Mumbai before it was rolled out for flight.

The airlines spokesperson was, however, not reachable despite repeated phone calls.

On Thursday afternoon, after taking off from Mumbai Airport, the pilot of A-320 had got suspicious and alerted the control tower about the landing gear glitch.

A preliminary investigation has given a clean chit to the pilot and held engineers responsible for the sloppy repair.

"The pilot's decision to fly Delhi was correct because there are more runways there, which is not the case with Mumbai," a private airlines pilot said.

"Ideally, engineers should have checked the wheel because once in the cockpit, a pilot doesnt get to see the wheel. Gadgets in the cockpit only tell him about air pressure in wheels, their position in the box, but not if a wheel has got dismantled," another pilot said.

Airport authorities declared full emergency as soon as the aircraft reached Delhi and asked it to fly low over main runway 28. Once it was found that a wheel is missing, the pilot was asked to touch down.

"It would have been really a precarious situation for the pilot. He would have had to stick to the central line of the runway all through after touchdown. Any slip up would have resulted in the aircraft skidding off while cruising at a high speed," another pilot said.

Source : DNA