The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Faulty fuel pumping system disrupts flights

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 03, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Faulty fuel pumping system disrupts flights

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: A faulty fuel pumping system at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) disrupted all air services out of Hyderabad on Monday morning, leading to disruption of flight schedules, holding up of passengers anxious to catch connecting flights elsewhere in the country.

Twenty seven aircraft of different airline companies, both domestic and international, could not take off as the aircraft could not be refuelled.

Domestic flight schedules went haywire as the delay was nearly two hours, while it was slightly manageable for the international flights with a delay ranging from 8 minutes to 34 minutes.

Airport sources attributed the delay to a failure in the fuel hydrant system which led to decreased pressure and consequently fuel could not be pumped into the aircraft. The RGIA has three fuel storage points which are connected by a modern underground pipeline system, which facilitates refuelling at the parking bays, without moving the tankers to the aircraft, like in other airports.

Reliance is the franchisee for fuel operations at the RGIA.

“With the fuel hydrants failing to build up the required pressure, we had to move the tankers to each of the aircraft,” an airport source said.

Anxious passengers who were not told about the cause of the delay initially were fretting and fuming and many began to wonder whether any hijack alert led to the delay in take offs. Most of the domestic air services were delayed by almost 90 minutes to two hours.

The most exasperated passengers were those taking the connecting flights to other destinations.

“The consequential delay due to the glitch has led to large scale disruption on different sectors. It’s a chaotic situation,” admitted an airline spokesman. Airline companies operate the aircraft to different cities in a single day and the ‘consequential delay’ has led disruption of schedules on all the sectors.

“This is common for all airlines,” another airline source confirmed.

An RGIA spokesman said the pressurisation problem was rectified and by 1 p.m. all flights were being operated as per schedule.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh

News Update

Stories in this Section