It seemed to be a night of delays for domestic airlines, as frustrated passengers across the country were forced to spend hours at the airport waiting for their flights to take off
It seemed to be a night of delays for domestic airlines, as frustrated passengers across the country were forced to spend hours at the airport waiting for their flights to take off. One such incident took place at Delhi airport, where a Jet Airways flight 9w 312 (Delhi-Mumbai) was delayed by three hours. And if the delay wasn’t enough, passengers were made to board and de-board three aircraft before being asked to wait for a rescheduled departure.
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Speaking to mid-day, a passenger on board the Jet Airways flight, Saurabh Jhaveri said he was left fuming after a Jet Airways staffer asked him to ‘Get lost’. Jhaveri, who is a platinum customer of the airline, said, “There have been delays and as a passenger I understand the situation of the airline but this time Jet has been inhuman to all of us. The flight was originally scheduled to take off at 8.50 pm but kept getting delayed before they finally announced that it would be delayed for three hours.”
Another Jet Airways Mumbai-bound flight was delayed for two hours and from its original time of departure 9.50pm was re scheduled to 11.40pm. Jhaveri said, “We were first on a Boeing aircraft, then on an Airbus and again back to Boeing aircraft stating some technical error. After a while they said that the incoming aircraft from Mumbai was delayed that was leading to consequent delays.
“One of the staffer named Garima told me ‘aapse jo ban padta hai karlo (do whatever you want to) in front of another colleague Ashish Dubey, who kept apologising for his colleague’s rude behaviour. It is only after the passengers put their foot down that the staff started adjusting few of us in alternate aircraft. However in my knowledge all Jet flights after 8pm are delayed here.” According to Delhi airport sources around 120 passengers were booked on this flight to Mumbai.
A female passenger on condition of anonymity explained, “None of the airline officials are attending to us. The superiors are busy with other work and the lower staff say they do not have any idea of our take off time. There are a good number of female passengers on this flight. How will we manage to get homes at this odd hour? We are aware that the Mumbai airport has a lot of Air traffic congestion, as it is peak hours for international flights there. So we are not sure if we will get to land on time or not.”
Another Jet Airways flight from Goa 9W 0427 that was to land Mumbai at 7.50pm landed Mumbai only at 8.55pm. Despite repeated attempts the spokesperson for Jet Airways was not available for comment at the time of going to press.