IndiGo Flight Stalled For 7 Hours

Sunday, 4th January 2015 at 02:59am

For the plane's 180 passengers, the agonizing wait at the airport after their plane failed to take off due to technical problem was, itself, a nightmare.

The flight was scheduled to take off from Raipur's Swami Vivekananda International Airport at 7:45PM Saturday for Chennai but ended up leaving the airport 7 hours later, into the wee hours.

The aircraft, according to airport officials, was already rolling from the tarmac to prepare for its takeoff, but the pilot had to cancel the plane's departure after the discovery of a technical problem. The passengers were told to get off the aircraft telling them a thorough inspection by aircraft technicians had to be performed first.

The passengers grew weary and became impatient when after some few hours of waiting, they didn't hear any words or advisory from the airline.

Turned out, the said problem was not fixed and the airline didn't disclose as to its details. Thus, the flight had to be canceled. So they requested an aircraft from Delhi as a replacement. It usually takes around 1 and a half hours for a flight over 508 nautical miles, the flight distance between the two cities.

The growing impatience of the passengers was aggravated from the airline's failure to dispatch a message to inform them what really happened.

Most of them were so incensed that they confronted the airline and airport officials for such torturous experience at the airport that seemed to last forever.

The heated arguments between the passengers and officials stretched onto the wee hours until the news came that their flight will finally take off. Time check: 3:00AM.

Last Saturday's incident was the second for Air India in less than a week when a handful of its flights were also unusually delayed from the same airport, most notable of which was the cancellation of a flight to Delhi due to fog. To avert the passengers' possible frustration, they were given free accommodation in a nearby hotel, as they had to wait until the next morning before their flight could take off.

By: Pete Lee.