A newly repaved runway shed loose gravel and chunks of tire rubber onto its surface at Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport in Varanasi, India, on Aug. 11, prompting an inbound IndiGo flight to abort its landing and forcing a two-hour runway shutdown. Varanasi, located in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, is now the focus of a formal investigation ordered by India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) — the country’s equivalent of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
The airport’s runway 09/27 underwent resurfacing Monday night as part of an ongoing expansion project. However, after eight to nine aircraft landed on the fresh surface Tuesday, a section of the new paving came loose, scattering pebbles and tire rubber across the runway, according to the Times of India.
IndiGo Flight Aborts Landing on Final Approach
IndiGo flight 6E 5025, inbound from Delhi with 154 passengers aboard, was on final approach when the crew spotted the debris scattered across the runway strip. Rather than complete the landing, the pilots executed a touch-and-go — briefly making contact with the runway before climbing back into the air — and diverted the aircraft to Lucknow, roughly 200 kilometers away.
Local reporting indicates an air ambulance pilot first flagged the loose gravel to air traffic control shortly before the IndiGo flight arrived, prompting controllers to hold inbound traffic while ground crews inspected the surface.
Airport officials confirmed the runway was closed via a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. local time while crews conducted rolling and surface maintenance on the damaged section. Airport Director Puneet Gupta said normal operations resumed once the work was complete.
Multiple Flights Diverted or Delayed
The closure rippled across the day’s schedule. In addition to the IndiGo touch-and-go, at least two more IndiGo flights — arriving from Ahmedabad and Navi Mumbai — were diverted to Lucknow. Arrivals from Ayodhya, Delhi, and Mumbai were delayed, and departures suffered knock-on effects: one IndiGo flight to Delhi was held for roughly six hours, a flight to Pune was delayed about five hours, and a flight to Ghaziabad was canceled outright.
DGCA Orders Probe Into Paving Contractor
The runway expansion and repaving work is being carried out by Agra-based contractor PNC Infratech. Indian regulators are now examining whether the paving met required quality-control standards and how loose material was allowed to reach an active runway surface so soon after aircraft operations resumed on the newly laid section.
Foreign object debris on runways is treated as a serious industry-wide hazard because even small fragments — pebbles, metal shards, or displaced pavement material — can be flung by jet blast or ingested by engines at the high speeds involved in landing and takeoff. Consequently, the Varanasi incident adds to a growing list of cases in which construction or resurfacing projects have introduced debris risks onto live runways rather than eliminating them.
The DGCA has not released a timeline for its findings. Flight operations at the airport have since returned to normal, though the broader runway expansion project remains ongoing.
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