The plane incident bears similarity to two other incidents in Canada and the United States, in which smoke filled the cockpits of two different A220s.

On August 24, 2023, Air Canada flight AC447 from Ottawa to Toronto, experienced smoke in the cockpit during final approach to the runway.

A similar incident would happen to a Delta Airlines flight on December 10, 223, when smoke was detected in the cockpit of flight DL 2380 from New Orleans to New York.  This also happened during the landing phase of the flight.

The PW Geared Turbofan engine series, which also power the Airbus A320 family and the Embraer E-Jet E2 and the Ikurt MC-21, came into the spotlight after several inflight shutdown incidents, triggered by overheating, premature wear and inflight failure of key components.

Many overheating incidents happened as the aircraft approached 29,000ft, described as the top-of-climb. This is a phase of flight when the engines spin faster as they power the aircraft to cruise level. To mitigate this, operators have been advised  to fly the aircraft manually through this phase and only engage the auto-pilot once in the cruise.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the European Aviation Safety Agency have responded with a number of airworthiness directives which have forced operators to ground fleets.

Last year, Indian operator Go First, which had a large number of A220s in its fleet went burst. It placed the blame on problems with the PW 1500G engines, which made many aircraft unavailable, making it difficult to meet its financial obligations.

Pratt and Whitney have responded with a number of software patches and hardware redesigns, but supply chain disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, have resulted in a large number of engines, which require fixing.