Thai flight returns to Bengaluru airport after snag; 200 wait for 5 hours

BENGALURU: A technical snag midair forced a Thai Airways flight with over 200 passengers to return to Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) early Wednesday.
The passengers were left stranded in the aircraft for five hours without any information from the crew, when it was finally announced that the flight had been cancelled.
Airport sources said Thai flight TG 326 to Bangkok took off from KIA at 12.27am on Wednesday and after 20 minutes, the captain announced that the aircraft was returning to Bengaluru.
"After a bout of turbulence, the pilot said there was some technical problem and we landed back in Bengaluru. The flight engineers then tried to fix the snag for nearly four hours at the airport before eventually saying they weren't able to do so. So, the flight was cancelled," said Jaideep Vaidya, a passenger.
Vaidya added that eventually the crew informed them the flight had been cancelled, after which they disembarked and had to wait in an airport bus for around 45 minutes. "Spent another couple of hours at the airport trying to get the flight crew and airport staff to give us answers. A lot of us, including myself, had connecting flights to take from Bangkok."
All the affected passengers were lodged in a hotel and many were accommodated on another flight on Thursday morning to Bangkok. A few passengers missed their connecting flight from the Thai capital because of the unexpected situation, airport sources added.
Thai Airways couldn't be reached for comment.