The Hindu : New Delhi News : Air India’s Saturday flights take off on Sunday

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Monday, Nov 19, 2007
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New Delhi

Air India’s Saturday flights take off on Sunday

Staff Reporter

Five flights delayed leaving passengers fuming; the worst hit were those bound for New York, Muscat

Stranded passengers see situation pathetic
Inadequate manpower worsened the situation

NEW DELHI: There was chaos at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here over the weekend as five Air India flights were delayed due to “technical snags”, leaving several hundred passengers inconvenienced. The flights finally took off on Sunday afternoon.

According to Air India spokesperson D. K. Kohli, the worst affected were flights AI-111 Delhi-London-New York and AI-841 Delhi-Abu Dhabi-Muscat which got delayed by over 24 hours. The New York-bound flight scheduled to take off at 7-20 a.m. on Saturday, was rescheduled for 12-40 p.m. on Sunday. Similarly, the flight headed for Muscat which was to take off at 12-35 p.m. on Saturday, left around the same time the next day. Other flights that got delayed by several hours because of the cascading effect were AI-891 to Jeddah, AI-187 to Toronto and AI-348 to Shanghai.

Passengers protested and demanded an explanation from the authorities. Qamar Ahmed said: “There was nobody to look after the passengers, nobody was concerned. It is a shame that our national carrier is functioning in such a pathetic manner.”

Another passenger Jagdish Sharma said: “Only some very junior officials were present at the airport. They had no information about the rescheduling of the flights.”

The Air India in a statement said: “The management while regretting the inconvenience caused to the passengers has decided to look into the technical reasons and also congestion at the check-in counters besides non-availability of the bay that led to delay in the departures of these flights.”

According to Mr. Kohli, lack of adequate manpower and infrastructure and impatience among passengers worsened the problem. “Of the 18 check-in counters, only six were operational causing longer queues. Moreover, the renovation work at the airport led to congestion and caused further delay in passenger movement from the counter to the aircraft by over 50 minutes,” he added.

Pointing out that the airport had only one restaurant and even if the authorities wanted they could not provide breakfast for more than 100 passengers, Mr. Kohli said the airline provided overnight stay for the affected passengers at two hotels. “The infrastructure problems will get ironed out in the next couple of years. Also, Air India will acquire 68 new planes over the next six months.”

Another flight delay

Kozhikode (Kerala): Passengers of an Air India flight staged a protest at the Karipur International airport here on Sunday after the Dubai-Kozhikode flight arrived almost 24 hours behind schedule. The flight, originally scheduled to arrive on Saturday morning, reached here at 4 a.m. on Sunday following which the passengers launched an agitation in front of the emigration counter.

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