12 hours ago
What happened to the IndiGo flight which lost its nose in a hailstorm last month?
On the evening of May 21, IndiGo flight 6E 2142 flying from Delhi to Srinagar experienced extreme turbulence after it was caught in a severe hailstorm.
Videos shared by the passengers revealed a scary situation, with the aircraft shaking violently amid flashes of lightning in the windows. And upon landing in Srinagar, it was discovered that a large part of the Airbus A321's nose cone had suffered significant damage due to the hail.
We had a narrow escape from Delhi to Srinagar flight indigo. Special thanks to the captain and cabin crew. @indigo @GreaterKashmir @RisingKashmir
— I_am_aaqib (@am_aaqib) May 21, 2025
'Flight 6E 2142 encountered bad weather and a hail storm and emergency was reported by the pilot to the ATC. However, the flight landed safely at Srinagar at 8.30 pm. All Aircrfthe inew and passengers are safe,' the spokesperson of the Srinagar Airport Authority said.
Thunderstorms pose a grave risk to aircraft and can result in structural failure and loss of control (LOC) accidents. Pilots go to great lengths to avoid or deviate around storm clouds, unless inevitable. Here is everything to know.
Thunderstorms are cumulonimbus (CB) clouds, thousands of feet tall and hundreds of miles wide. Some thunderstorm clouds rise over 50,000 ft, well above the maximum altitude an aircraft can climb, and far higher than the ceilings of most aircraft.
Types of thunderstorms
* Single-cell: The cumulonimbus formation contains only a single thunderstorm cell. The formation of a thunderstorm inside a CB cloud, its maturing and finally its dissipation constitute a cell.
* Multi-cell: The cumulonimbus formation contains several thunderstorm cells at different stages of formation and maturation.
* Squall line: A multi-cell thunderstorm in which the cells are arranged in a long line stretching hundreds of miles.
* Super-cell: A super-cell is a rotating thunderstorm, the rotating movement caused by the presence of a mesocyclone, a rising vortex of air rotating around a vertical axis. Super-cells pack the most destructive weather for flying.
* Embedded thunderstorms: Embedded inside ordinary cloud decks, these can be hard to spot visually or without weather radar.
Why do thunderstorms pose a threat to aircraft?
Thunderstorms pack severe turbulence, hail, heavy rain, icing, lightning, downbursts, microbursts, windshear, updrafts, tornadoes, gusty winds, and engines ingest a lot of water – all of which are a hazard to flying. A thunderstorm's destructive effects can be felt 10 to 20 nautical miles from its outer edges.
* Ice accumulation on wings alters their aerodynamic properties and destroys 'lift', the aerodynamic force that keeps an aircraft aloft. Ice crystals can block pitot tubes, the nozzles near an aircraft's nose that feed air to the airspeed indicator.
* Lightning can damage an aircraft's skin, communication antennas, electronic navigational equipment and magnetic compass. It can also leave the pilots temporarily blind.
* Downbursts, microbursts and updrafts are powerful vertical columns of air moving up or down. An aircraft flying through a downburst, microburst or updraft loses or gains altitude rapidly without pilot inputs.
* Windshear is a rogue wind that rapidly changes direction. An aircraft encounters both headwind and tailwind in a windshear. Close to the ground, windshear encounters have led to several fatal air crashes.
It was hail that stole the nose cone of the IndiGo A320. In his classic book The Fate is the Hunter, American aviator Ernest K Gann compared his experience of getting caught in a hailstorm with being trapped in a 'tin can' with a 'thousand machine guns' pointed at the aircraft.
How does a pilot account for a thunderstorm?
A mere thunderstorm warning is not enough basis for an automatic no-go decision. If all pilots of all scheduled flights along a route with a thunderstorm warning were to take a 'no-go' decision outright, it would result in the cancellation of hundreds of flights and impact passengers and airlines.
Before each flight, the pilot files a flight plan with the Air Traffic Control detailing all information about the flight: The destination, the aircraft operator, fuel, weight, route, flight time, alternate airports in case of diversion, winds aloft, airspace restrictions, weather en route and at destination (including thunderstorm warning). Thus, the pilot carefully studies the weather before taking a 'go' or 'no-go' decision regarding take-off, even choosing to cancel or delay the departure when necessary.
A host of weather bureaus provide weather data to pilots. Aircraft today have onboard weather radar and datalink weather, making modern jets better-equipped to divert or deviate around storms.
SIGMET, or Significant Meteorological Information, reports contain warnings about hazardous weather like thunderstorms, turbulence, icing and hail.
Onboard weather radar is an effective tool for storm avoidance. Scanning for precipitation, it 'paints' a picture of the weather ahead on a screen in the cockpit: Black patches indicate very light precipitation, green patches indicate light precipitation, yellow medium precipitation, red heavy precipitation and magenta extreme precipitation or turbulence. However, it cannot detect a storm cell hiding behind heavy rain.
Every Airbus aircraft is equipped with an Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM), which displays engine and aircraft system information to pilots along with audio alerts, including system failures and corrective actions to be followed.
The Airbus computer operates under three flight control laws.
Essentially, when an Airbus is flying under Alternate or Direct Law, the flight is warning its pilots: 'Now be careful with what you do, as my ability to automatically keep the aircraft safe has been reduced.'
The pilots of the IndiGo flight, 6E 2142, were confident they could steer the plane away from the path of the thunderstorm. To deviate, they first sought permission from the Indian Air Force's Northern Area Control Centre (NACC) to fly towards the India-Pakistan International Border (IB), which the IAF refused. The Indian Express had cited IAF sources who said that the NACC's directive was 'within the frame of the ban on Indian aircraft in Pakistani airspace'. A request to Lahore ATC to permit a brief entry into Pakistani airspace to bypass the storm was also turned down.
The pilots considered turning back, since the flight was likely experiencing the effects of the thunderstorm. 'Crew initially attempted to turn back, but as they were close to the thunderstorm cloud, they decided to penetrate the weather,' the DGCA said in a statement. It is generally not recommended to turn back once inside a storm, as turns can overstress the airframe. Flying straight ahead and 'riding the storm' is the best bet to reach smooth air in minimum time.
Inside the storm, the A320 was tossed up and down by severe updrafts and downdrafts, climbing and descending wildly on its own. A severe hailstorm pried out the nose cone protecting the weather radar, which is designed to detect inclement weather. This rendered the radar unusable, with the readings of cockpit gauges exceeding their design limits and likely becoming unreliable and unreadable.
The IndiGo crew received multiple fault warnings about aircraft systems, including 'Angle of Attack' fault, 'Alternate Law' loss, unreliable speed, stall and overspeed warnings. It is likely that many of the warning messages the IndiGo pilots received were false alarms. But if they lost Alternate Law protection, it definitely increased their workload at a critical time.
Despite the scary scenes, the loss of the aircraft's nose did not pose a direct threat to the passengers within the plane. The passenger cabin is essentially a sealed, pressurised tube, and the hole was outside of this area.
