Representative image
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The tip of the tail of an IndiGo Airbus A320 aircraft, travelling from Hyderabad to Chennai, scraped against a runway on Saturday (June 14, 2025), according to photographs shared by airline industry sources. However, IndiGo has denied that the aircraft was involved in a tail strike, while acknowledging that there had been an incident. The aircraft, registered as VT-IPZ, has not taken off from Chennai since landing there on June 14.

The airline has reported six known incidents of tail strikes by IndiGo’s A321 aircraft since 2023, with two of them involving a single aircraft, registered as VT-IBI. The A321 is a longer version of the A320.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau is in the process of investigating the problem, but has been burdened by a slew of other cases, including multiple chopper crashes in Uttarakhand, problems at pilot training schools, and most recently, the Air India crash that killed 241 people on board and others on the ground in Ahmedabad three days ago.

AAIB investigators stretched thin

The last tail strike involving an IndiGo Airbus A321 also occurred in Chennai on March 8. The aircraft, registered as VT-IBI, was flying from Mumbai to Chennai and hit the runway during landing. The same aircraft had been previously involved in a tail strike on September 9, 2024, after which it was grounded for over five months for maintenance until February 6. The aircraft then operated 190 flights before its tail was hit again in March.

After the March 8 incident, a senior AAIB official told The Hindu that the Bureau was going to investigate all Airbus A321 tail strike incidents together, in “totality”. However, the report into the September tail strike, which was categorised as a “serious incident”, has not yet been released. AAIB sources told The Hindu that Airbus has provided its inputs into the event, and the accident probe agency is still “examining” them.

In fact, AAIB sources said in March that the agency was yet to release probe reports into at least six serious incidents involving airlines over a period of the last year. AAIB officials acknowledged at that time that they did not have adequate investigators, and were also busy probing the aircraft used for pilot training at flying schools.