A Royal Navy F-35B Lightning II valued at roughly $110 million remains grounded in southern India more than three weeks after it made an emergency landing at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport on 14 June. The stealth fighter, operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales in the Arabian Sea, diverted to the Kerala capital after low fuel and bad weather made a carrier recovery unsafe. The Indian Air Force, which had earmarked the civilian airport as an emergency field, cleared the diversion and managed ground coordination. While the single-engine jet refuelled without incident, engineers subsequently detected a hydraulic fault that prevented it from taking off. Ship-based technicians were unable to resolve the problem, prompting London to dispatch a dedicated repair crew. On 6 July a Royal Air Force A400M transport arrived with 17–25 specialists and equipment; the aircraft was towed the same day into the airport’s Air India Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul hangar for detailed inspection. A spokesperson for the British High Commission said repairs are ‘underway’ and thanked Indian authorities for their ‘continued support and collaboration’. Defence officials involved in the effort said the team will decide in the coming days whether the fighter can be certified for flight from Kerala or must be partially dismantled and air-lifted home aboard an RAF C-17 Globemaster III. The airport operator has indicated that parking and hangar fees will be billed to the UK once the episode concludes. The prolonged grounding has turned the cutting-edge jet into an unlikely local celebrity, spawning memes and a tongue-in-cheek Kerala Tourism campaign. Beyond the social-media attention, the incident underscores persistent maintenance challenges in the global F-35 programme—highlighted last year by a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on lengthy component repair times—while also offering a real-world test of India-UK defence cooperation procedures.