Air India plane catches fire moments after landing as passengers are getting off

An Air India aircraft caught fire shortly after landing at a major airport on Tuesday, but all passengers and crew members safely disembarked, the airline has said.

Flight AI315, from Hong Kong to Delhi, experienced an auxiliary power unit (APU) fire shortly after landing and parking at the gate at Indira Gandhi International Airport. The airline said the incident happened while passengers were disembarking, adding that the APU shut down automatically, as it is designed to do. The company said nobody was harmed, but there was "some damage" to the aircraft. The plane has now been grounded as an investigation is carried out, Air India said.

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The airline said in a statement shared on social media: "Flight AI315, operating from Hong Kong to Delhi on 22 July 2025, experienced an auxiliary power unit (APU) fire shortly after it had landed and parked at the gate. The incident occurred while passengers had begun disembarking, and the APU was automatically shut down as per system design.

"There was some damage to the aircraft, however, passengers and crew members disembarked normally, and are safe. The aircraft has been grounded for further investigations and the regulator has been duly notified."

An APU is a small engine found on aircraft that is used to generate electricity and compressed air for various systems, especially while the aircraft is on the ground. This allows the plane to be self-sufficient at airports, allowing it to reduce reliance on external power sources and main engine operation.

Today's incident is the third near miss for Air India in 48 hours. On Monday, a flight from Kochi to Mumbai veered off the runway while landing, which damaged both the plane and the tarmac. Then in the evening, a flight from Delhi to Kolkata aborted take-off after a technical issue was detected while the aircraft was accelerating on the runway at 155kmph.

It comes as investigations into last month's tragic Air India crash, which killed everyone onboard apart from one passenger, continue. A preliminary investigation report that came out earlier this month found that fuel control switches for the engines were moved from the "run" to the "cut-off" position moments before impact, starving both engines of fuel.

The report, issued by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, also indicated that both pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting, which caused a loss of engine thrust shortly after take-off. The Air India flight - a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner - crashed on June 12 and killed at least 260 people, including 19 on the ground, in the north-western city of Ahmedabad.

Only one passenger survived the crash, which is one of India's worst aviation disasters. According to the report, the flight lasted around 30 seconds between take-off and crash. It said that once the aircraft achieved its top recorded speed, "the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cut-off switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another" within a second. The report did not say how the switches could have flipped to the cut-off position during the flight.

The movement of the fuel control switches allows and cuts fuel flow to the plane's engines. The switches were flipped back into the run position, the report said, but the plane could not gain power quickly enough to stop its descent after the aircraft had begun to lose altitude. The report stated: "One of the pilots transmitted 'MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY.'"