Hyderabad: An Air India flight, AI- 965, connecting Mumbai and Jeddah via Hyderabad, which was supposed to take off at 3 pm on Friday, was delayed by 10 hours at the Mumbai International Airport. Furious passengers staged a protest at the airport.
A few passengers who were to fly to Hyderabad were delayed by almost 10 hours. The airline, however, did not cite any reason for the delay.
The delay disturbed the schedule of over 300 passengers, who staged a protest at the departure lounge. The fight finally took off at 1:30 am.
Travelling to Hyderabad was passenger V.K.S. Menon who said, “My 82-year-old mother and wife had to aimlessly sit at the airport lounge for 10 long hours. We reached the Mumbai airport at around 12.30 pm. The flight was scheduled to take off at 3 pm on Friday; the ground staff first announced a delay of 2 hours, the announcement dragged on till 1.30 am. As passengers demanded answers from the airline, they disappeared; there was no one there except for some policemen, to give any information to the passengers.”
The AI 965 Mumbai-Hyderabad flight reached Hyderabad by 4.25 pm and again left at 5.55 pm and reached Jeddah by 9.15 pm.
The fight was carrying a large contingent of pilgrims travelling to Jeddah, who were left with no option but to wait. Many passengers were found sleeping on the lounge floor. “What was appalling was that the airline did not give us any information or any assistance. They simply displayed that AI-865 had been rescheduled to leave at 10 pm,” Menon said.
According to reports, last Thursday more than 110 (23 per cent) of all flights were delayed at the Mumbai airport.
