Air India’s Delhi-Vancouver flight will depart with a delay of 22 hours
Air India’s June 1 Vancouver flight from Delhi finally took off at 3:15 a.m. Sunday after a nearly 22-hour delay, a source said.
The flight was scheduled to depart at 5:30 am on Saturday, but a “technical” problem forced the airline to reschedule the flight.
“Air India’s Delhi-Vancouver flight, which was supposed to depart on Saturday morning, finally took off around 3.15 am on Sunday,” the source said.
“AI 185…was delayed due to technical issues and subsequently because the crew was under mandatory flight time restrictions,” an Air India spokesperson had said in a statement on Saturday.
This was at least the third time in the past week that Air India’s ultra-long-haul flights faced excessive delays for one reason or the other.
Earlier, after a delay of over 30 hours, the airline’s Delhi-San Francisco flight, which was originally scheduled to depart around 3.30 pm on Thursday, took off at 9.55 pm the next day.
However, despite the plight of the passengers due to the massive delay, Tata Group-owned Air India has not issued any official statement.
“If there is a privatization story that has failed, it is that @airindia @DGCAIndia flight was delayed by more than 8 hours. is inhumane! @JM_Scindia,” said Shweta Punj, a journalist in a post on X on Thursday evening.
ALSO READ: Air India’s Delhi-Vancouver flight has been delayed and has been rescheduled for Sunday
Air India, which was previously owned by the Indian government, was privatized and transferred to Tata Group in January 2022.
On Saturday, the airline apologized and offered passengers on the flight to San Francisco a $350 travel voucher for the massive delay due to multiple factors, including the malfunctioning of the Boeing 777 aircraft’s air conditioning system.
The day before, aviation regulator DGCA had issued a show-cause notice to Air India due to several flight delays and inability to properly cater to passengers.
In the show cause notice, the watchdog mentioned the inordinate delay of two international flights – AI 183 from Delhi to San Francisco on May 30 and AI 179 from Mumbai to San Francisco on May 24.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: June 2, 2024 | 12:37 pm IST