Flyers fume over six-hour delay of Air India flight to Hyderabad

PUNE: Altogether 55 passengers bound for Hyderabad from Pune faced a harrowing time when their Air India flight was delayed by close to six hours on Wednesday evening.

The flight (AI-9868), which was scheduled to take off at 9:30pm, finally departed around 2.50am.

The airline cited ‘technical reason’ as the cause for the delay but the passengers claimed that they were provided with false information by the authorities.

Lakshmi Manchu, actor, television presenter and producer, who was on the flight, took to Twitter to express her frustration. “You made us wait 4 hours at the airport with your lies of ‘we will take off shortly’ and now when we are supposed to take off at 12.15am you tell us, ‘another 2-hour delay’. An officer walks away as he speaks to me. No food, no water, no information. Stranded in Pune,” she twitted.

Among the passengers was Mudit Kumar Dutt, who wrote on Twitter: “The flight is supposed to take off at 9:30pm from Pune but till now there is no update whether the aircraft will come to Pune or not. Worst part is that the Air India officials are not aware of anything.”

An Air India official said, “It was a technical issue in Hyderabad which resulted in the flight not being able to take off. The safety of passengers is important and hence it was decided that a fresh aircraft should be operated between the two destinations. The claim that passengers were not given refreshments is false. In fact, we provided biryani to them and frequent information was provided. The delay is regretted,” the official said.