Air India were still to take a decision at the time of going to press whether to fly Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi  in the plane that was grounded in Berlin or continue using the standby aircraft to ferry him back home after it receives a report on the engine problem-hit aircraft’s airworthiness.

A team of engineers was dispatched to Berlin after a problem in one of the engines of the Air India One Boeing 747-400 plane was detected on Monday, forcing the carrier to fly an standby VVIP aircraft from Mumbai to Berlin in the early hours of Tuesday.

“The engineers are carrying out boroscope inspection of the aircraft. Based on the outcome of the inspection, we will decide whether the Prime Minister should fly back home on Saturday in the same plane or the one which took him to Canada,” media from India quoted its source as saying.

Air India has five double-deck B747s in its fleet to fly the President and the Prime Minister.

Air India One, a Boeing 747-400 had carried Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Delhi to Berlin after halts in Paris, Toulouse and Hannover. The Prime Minister had left Delhi for Paris on April 9 and is scheduled to reach India on the morning of April 18.

The standby plane, kept in readiness in Mumbai, had left early Tuesday morning for Berlin and was used for flying the Prime Minister and his entourage to Ottawa in Canada on the last leg of his three-nation tour.