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An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner , en route to Mumbai from Addis Ababa, was forced to conduct an emergency landing on Friday morning at city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) due to cabin depressurisation following which 7 passengers onboard fell ill.  The aircraft made an emergency landing in Mumbai at 1:42 am, refueling the apprehensions about safety of Boeing aircraft .

 

“On landing, seven passengers were attended to by the airport medical team for decompression-related symptoms, out of which one required hospitalisation,” a sources said. The issue started when the plane was flying over the Arabian Sea at a cruising altitude of 33,000 feet.The depressurisation warning led to a rapid decline in altitude as per FlightRadar24 data. The  incident occurred on flight ET640 when the aircraft was flying over the Arabian Sea.  The plane was cruising at 33,000 feet when the cabin depressurisation took place and the pilots executed a rapid descent to a lower altitude, he explained.

 

“On landing, seven passengers were attended to by the airport medical team for decompression-related symptoms, out of which one required hospitalisation," sources at the airport said, adding that two of the passengers and crew members continued feeling the symptoms till landing and received medical attention after the aircraft landed. They were later discharged.It is important to note that for human survival, aircraft cabins are sealed and pressurised with conditioned air and oxygen. This allows aircraft to fly at higher altitudes where oxygen levels are low.

 

However, in rare instances, the pressurisation system fails, causing a lack of air and oxygen within the aircraft. The pressure and oxygen level in the cabin will then drop, and oxygen masks will deploy from the overhead panel.

 

Pertinently,  that the incident took place days after 11 flyers, including 6 crew members, felt dizzy and nauseous during an Air India Heathrow-Mumbai flight operated with a Boeing 777 aircraft on June 23. The cause of the illness is currently under investigation.

Meanwhile, civil aviation still remains under scrutiny following the Air India AI171 flight, which crashed in Ahmedabad earlier this month.