Mangaluru, June 18: Several incidents on the drawback of Air India service are being reported and one such incident has been reported on Wednesday, June 17th.
The Air India flight which started in the early morning on Wednesday from Jeddah to Kochi without landing there had moved to New Delhi. In New Delhi, no arrangements were made for the passengers nor were any information conveyed to them. Hence, they had to face a tough time spending over eight hours in the aviation.
The Air India flight with over 300 passengers (about 160 Mangaluru passengers) started at 3am from Jeddah to Kochi on Wednesday. But due to some reasons (Passengers say weather condition, it is said technical issues as per the information of Air India given to the company which had made arrangements for the passengers), the flight which was expected to land at the Kochi airport by 7.30 am moved to New Delhi.
We were supposed to descend at the Kochi Airport by 7.30 am, but the flight landed at New Delhi by11am. All the passengers including the aged people and the children faced a tough time as no facilities were made to provide breakfast and drinking water. Even there was no A/C system which caused a great inconvenience to all. We were informed that due to bad wether condition, the flight has landed in New Delhi but there was no information on the flight’s take off. Although the lunch was provided, the passengers suffered inconveniences including the toilet and other facilities, informed Zenath- a passenger to the media persons.
With all these mess, the Air India flight finally left New Delhi at around 4.40 pm on Wednesday and landed at Kochi by 7.45pm.
On January 1st, Zeenath along with her husband Ibrahim, Junaida, and Zapeera had been on a pilgrimage to Umra via Jeddah.
A team of 160 persons from Mangaluru had been to Jeddah through Al-Sabeel Company. When an agent of this company was contacted to know about the delay, it was learnt that “Due to technical problems, the Air India flight had moved to New Delhi. As the Air India failed to make proper arrangements for its passengers, they had to spend a long time in the flight even without the A/C system”, she informed.
