Technical glitches ground Air India Dreamliner in Kuala Lumpur

An Air India Dreamliner, flying non-stop from Sydney to Delhi, with 215 people on board, on Wednesday landed in Kuala Lumpur under emergency conditions after its cockpit panels suffered a software malfunction.

The pilots of the Boeing 787 who spotted the glitch on their panel while the aircraft was overflying Malaysia, immediately informed the Kuala Lumpur air traffic control and sought permission to land, airline sources said.

The aircraft landed under emergency conditions at the airport, they said, adding it was a "normal" landing. The plane, operating flight AI-301, was coming to Delhi from Sydney via Melbourne.

An Air India spokesperson said all the passengers have been provided hotel accommodation at Kuala Lumpur. As no Dreamliner engineers were available in the Malaysian capital, they were being flown in from Hong Kong.

With the flight duty limit of the existing crew ending, a team of cockpit and cabin crew was also being flown from India and the flight is expected to arrive in Delhi on Thursday evening, the spokesperson said.

Air India's Dreamliner aircraft have been facing a series of problems since they were grounded for almost four months from January last year.