Hyderabad to Phuket Air India Express Flight Returns Minutes After Takeoff

An Air India Express flight bound for Phuket was forced to return to Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad on Saturday, just minutes after takeoff.

According to reports, Flight IX110 departed around 6:49 am, roughly 20 minutes behind its scheduled time. The aircraft, a Boeing 737 Max 8, was expected to land in Phuket at 11:45 am, but instead turned back to Hyderabad shortly after takeoff.

The flight remained in the air for only about eight minutes. A technical snag is suspected to be the cause of the diversion.

However, Air India Express has not released an official statement explaining the reason for the diversion.

This incident comes at a time when the Indian aviation sector is under intense scrutiny, following a series of serious mishaps. The most tragic among them was the crash of Air India flight AI-171 on June 12 in Ahmedabad. The London-bound flight crashed into a medical college campus seconds after takeoff, claiming the lives of at least 270 people.

In a separate incident, a full emergency was declared at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport on Wednesday night after an IndiGo flight (6E 6271) from Delhi to Goa reported a technical snag mid-air.

The pilot issued a ‘Pan-Pan’ alert—an emergency call indicating a situation less urgent than a Mayday—before making a safe emergency landing in Mumbai. The issue was later traced to a malfunction in engine number 1.