This is the story of vistara flight 944. Vistara has been a staple of indias skies for the past decade or so and as of the 12th of november 2024, vistara will be merged into the new air india and will cease to exist as its own entity. Given that I thought it would be interesting to look at one of vistara’s closest calls as we havent covered them on the channel yet. The date is the 15th of july 2019. On the ground at mumbai india , at 9:27 UTC an airbus A320 is loaded up with 8500 kilos of fuel for a quick hop to delhi, india. The plane took off and flew all the way to delhi with no issues. But as they got close to delhi they got the first whiff of trouble. The winds were particularly bad that day with winds at 20 knots gusting to 30 knots. ATC knew that it would get worse before it got better and told the pilots to expect delays. With the weather so fickle they decided that, they might have to divert and so they started looking at the weather of the airports in the vicinity. But as they were having that conversation, ATC gave them new vectors to set them up for an ILS approach to runway 29 at delhi. The runway was wet and windy, this would be a challenging landing. As the pilots fought through the wind and the rain it looked like they might actually land at delhi but then just 250 feet off of the ground the winds shifted and the pilots had no choice but to go around. The pilots did not think that the weather in the area of delhi would improve any time soon so they asked ATC for vectors to lucknow. An airport close to delhi that is often used as a diversion airport for delhi. As the jet climbed away from delhi, the pilots punched in a course that would take them around some nasty weather on the way to lucknow. They started their descent into Lucknow a bit earlier than usual due to traffic. But heres the problem the weather at lucknow started to deteriorate as well. The weather system that was hammering Delhi was also starting to mess with lucknow. The A320 was number three in the sequence and they let the controllers know that they could not take any delays to get into the airport as they were starting to run low on fuel. The controllers were like yeah there shouldnt be a problem with you getting in in time but the weather system was practically over the airport. The pilots were now literally in a race againt the clock, would they be able to put this plane down before the weather made a landing impossible? Or would they have to stay airborne on a fuel state that was getting worse by the second. Things were not looking good as the plane in front of them went around due to the weather. 17 miles from the runway the pilots got the call that they had been dreading, the visibility had dropped to 275 meters all the way from 475 meters. This landing was a no go. They were now well and truly for the lack of a better word screwed. The pilots stayed low to the ground to land as soon as possible once the weather improved. At this point an amber warning came on the MCDU they were at minimum fuel. The pilots were desperate, they enquired with the ATC about the nearest airport which was kanpur. Kanpur wasnt even listed in the database as being an airport capable of supporting an A320 but any runway is better than an open field or worse a densely populated area. They decided to go for kanpur. But as they started to head for Kanpure the weather there started to head south. This is when they decided to head for another airport nearby kanpur called prayagraj. Heres the problem they had no idea if theyd be able to make it to prayaraj with the fuel that they had and making matters worse both kanpur and prayagraj were not in the planes database, so they had to use VOR and ADF beacons to get them to these airport. They didnt even have charts to land at these airports. If they got to these airports and thats a big if they would have to fully rely on ATC to guide them in. But the pilots of flight 944 was thrown a lifeline the weather at lucknow had improved. They now had 500 kilos of fuel onboard. At this point lucknow was 37 miles away and paryagraj was 58 miles away. The choice was clear they were headed back to lucknow. The

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