Held up Air India flight dampens holiday mood

An Air India flight, AI 866 from Mumbai to Delhi, was allegedly delayed by five hours on Sunday morning resulting in passengers creating a ruckus at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.

The flight was scheduled to take off at 9 am but could not due to technical engineering faults, claimed the passengers. After spending almost two hours in the aircraft, the 800 on-board passengers were offloaded, said Sanyukta Dharmadhikari, one of the passengers. She added, "At 10.15 am, there was an in-flight announcement that the flight would be ready to take off in 30 minutes but at 11.15 am we were told the issue couldn't be fixed and that we would have to be offloaded." Dharmadhikari continued, "The next flight was scheduled for take off at 1 pm but even at 12.30, the boarding gates were not open which agitated the passengers further and began shouting slogans like 'Air India haaye haaye'."

The flight finally took off at 2.15 pm and landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport at around 3.45 pm. "I had to report to office by 2 pm which is why I had booked a 9 am flight. We couldn't make an official complaint as the airline crew had moved out of the aircraft and sent in security," Mihika Sarangi, another passenger.

An Air India spokesperson told DNA, "The aircraft had developed a technical snag due to which the passengers had to wait until we could make arrangements to accommodate them in another aircraft."