Flight schedules are still in a haze

MUMBAI: Air traffic between Mumbai and Delhi continued to be affected by poor visibility due to the fog in and around the airport at New Delhi. Airport officials said flights from Delhi were behind schedule by more than two hours. They said the late arrival of flights from New Delhi would cause consequential delays on all connecting sectors. Three international flights and three domestic flights were diverted to Mumbai airport on Wednesday  morning.

 

Passengers had a tough time for the third consecutive day. Though the airlines claim that they kept informing about the flight positions through text messages, Go Air passengers vehemently denied it.

 

Said Neha Verma, a media executive flying on the Delhi-Mumbai Go Air flight, “We keep hearing of the airlines saying that we will inform you about the delay. But I was not informed about the flight which was delayed by three hours. The flight G8-151 was to have departed at 9:30 a.m. from Delhi and reach Mumbai at 11:30 a.m. Instead it departed at 11:30am and reached Mumbai at 2:45 p.m. I was compensated with food. That was not what I want. All I wanted was the flight information. I travel by air to save time. I understand that one cannot do anything about the fog, but at least they can inform the passengers.” Savita Pai, a passenger on the same flight, too, had to face a lot of hardships.

 

Five months pregnant, she bought a ticket for the January 1flight. At the airport, she learnt that the flight had been cancelled with her ticket stamped for the G8-153 flight for the next day.

 

“So the next day, I went again at 7:30 in the morning (this flight was supposed to depart at 9:30 am) only to told that the fight was full. I did not know what happened. I showed them my ticket and fought with the duty manager. But all in vain. I insisted because I had an appointment with my doctor for that day. They advised me to take a flight to Goa and then take a Volvo bus from there. My five-year-old daughter was there with me. They finally gave me the ticket for January 3, and I reached Mumbai in a flight, which was again late by three hours.”

 

She said it was not right on the part of the airlines not to inform them about the cancellation. “Even when we called the airlines, they did not inform us about the cancellation. I am feeling drained after all this delay. My daughter has missed her school for two days,” she added. Passengers departing from Mumbai, too, had a tough time due to the backlog of flights at the Delhi airport. “The IC 167 Delhi-Mumbai-Thiruvananthapuram Indian flight was supposed to depart at 4:15pm, but it had not left even at 5pm,” said a passenger.