Ordeal for Delhi-bound passengers as Air India flight takes off nine hours late from Pune airport

PUNE: More than 100 passengers of a Delhi-bound Air India flight were left stranded at the Pune airport after their flight (AI-854) was delayed by almost nine hours on Wednesday evening.
The flight, which was scheduled to take off at 9.55pm on Wednesday, finally left Pune around 7.30am on Thursday. As a result, some flyers missed their onward domestic and international flights.
Sumit Bhatnagar, a flyer, said that there was no coordination between the airline ground staff and the customer service team. “The ground staff informed the flyers that there was a slight delay and the flight will take off at 10pm. At 10pm, the flyers were told that the flight will take off at 10:30pm and then they were told that the flight will depart at 11:30pm. The airline staff said that there was a technical fault in one of the engines and the engineers were trying to fix it,” he said.
When the flight didn’t take off even at 11:30pm, many flyers, especially those who had domestic and international flights from Delhi, started getting anxious. “Around midnight, the ground staff announced that the flight had been cancelled. They said that passengers can call the customer service and seek refund or wait till 7:30am the next day (Thursday) for another flight. Many flyers called up the customer service for refund, but the representatives had no clue about the delay. They said that refund was not possible as the flight had departed on time,” Bhatnagar said.
A query was sent to Air India on Thursday for its response, however, an answer from the now Tata-owned airline, was awaited. The airline in response to tweets from flyers stated that it was trying to minimise the hassles faced by passengers.