The plane landed in Karachi at 8:03 AM (GMT+5), 53 minutes after being airborne, according to Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). It has been on-ground for the past four hours.

The passengers are safe and have been transferred to the transit lounge, while the plane has been parked in the designated area, where engineers are assessing the problem.

The aircraft will only be given clearance for flight after the engineers have properly evaluated it.

“A replacement plane will be sent to Karachi to take the passengers to Dubai,” the SpiceJet spokesperson said.

This is the sixth such incident on a SpiceJet plane in the past three months.

On July 2, a SpiceJet plane headed to Jabalpur returned to Delhi, after crew members observed smoke in the cabin at an altitude of around 5,000. There was oil leakage in one of the engines of the Q400 aircraft.

Last month, a SpiceJet aircraft carrying 185 passengers caught fire soon after taking off from Patna and had to make an emergency landing a few minutes later.

Similarly, on May 4, a SpiceJet Boeing 737 MAX plane (Chennai-Durgapur) had to return due to an engine shutting down mid-air.

Only a few days before this, passengers were injured due to major turbulence in a SpiceJet plane flying from Mumbai to Jabalpur.

The frequency of such events has raised questions over India’s third-largest airline. Many people have taken to Twitter to urge the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to take action.