A video of an Air India plane stuck underneath an over-bridge in the capital, Delhi, has gone viral.
The scrapped plane, which had reportedly been sold off, was being transported when it got stuck.
The video shows traffic passing by the plane whose wings appear to have been removed.
A journalist, who tweeted the video, shared a statement by Air India which said the airline had no connection with the plane anymore.
“This is a [deregistered] scrapped aircraft of Air India which has been sold off. This was transported last night by the party [new owners]. Air India has got no connection whatsoever with the aircraft under any circumstances,” the statement read.
Delhi airport officials told the Times of India newspaper that the “aircraft certainly does not belong to the Delhi airport’s fleet,” and that the “driver may have made an error while transporting it.”
The video has been watched thousands of times on Twitter and YouTube, with many asking how the plane got stuck in the first place.
As the video went viral, some tweeted saying the plane had been stuck under the bridge for a few days now.Others felt that before transporting the plane, the route should have been checked. Many drew parallels with a similar incident which reportedly happened in the state of West Bengal in December 2019 when an abandoned Air India post plane got stuck under a bridge.
A number of bids have been put forward for India’s loss-making national carrier, including one on behalf of its employees.
The Indian government had tried to offload its stake in Air India in 2018 but failed to attract a single bid.
One group is representing employees and plans to offer them a controlling stake in the struggling airline.
Another bid is reported to have been put forward by the Tata Group, which originally founded the airline in 1932.
Tata, which owns Jaguar Land Rover, sold its stake to the government in the 1950s.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to sell the government’s entire interest in the airline, which has been kept aloft by a bailout and racked up billions in debts.
The airline has many assets, including prized slots at London’s Heathrow airport, a fleet of more than 100 planes and thousands of trained pilots and crew. -BBC
