Flight TR24, which departed late Tuesday morning, was forced to turn back 48 minutes after it took off from Singapore after pilots discovered a fault with the aircraft’s weather radar component, Straits Times reported.
Beleaguered budget carrier Scoot has been dogged by yet another operational hiccup on Tuesday that saw a Melbourne-bound flight making a U-turn shortly after take off.
Flight TR24, which departed late Tuesday morning, was forced to turn back 48 minutes after it took off from Singapore after pilots discovered a fault with the aircraft’s weather radar component, Straits Times reported.
The aircraft was returned safely to Singapore at 12.49pm, a Scoot spokesperson confirmed.
Subsequently, the flight took off at about 6pm after the fault was resolved.
As a result of the disruption, the return flight from Melbourne, TR25, will be shifted to depart on Wednesday at 7.30am local time, instead of its original timing of Tuesday at 10.30pm local time.
Affected passengers had been informed of the new flight timing in advance through email and SMS, the airline said.
This is the latest in a recent string of flight delays that have dogged Scoot due to technical issues with its B-787 fleet.
Since November 26, there the budget carrier has suffered at least 10 major disruptions which led to delays of up to 56 hours for affected passengers.
Scoot, the budget arm of Singapore Airlines, is one of several carriers to be hit by a series of engine glitches affecting Rolls-Royce's Trent 1000, which powers the B-787s.
The turbine blades inside the Trent 1000 "package C" engines are corroding and cracking at a quicker than expected rate.
In April last year, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States gave notice that B-787s fitted with the Rolls-Royce engine cannot operate more than 140 minutes away from an airport that they can divert to in an emergency - down from 330 minutes before.
This was after the European Aviation Safety Agency ordered additional maintenance checks on the Trent 1000.
Scoot, which has 18 B-787s, has at least one plane grounded at any one time. Rolls-Royce has promised the problem will be fixed but experts caution that this could take many months.