Stuck in plane, van delays flight
There could be hundreds of bizarre reasons why a flight can get delayed but this one takes the cake, and the catering van.
There could be hundreds of bizarre reasons why a flight can get delayed but this one takes the cake, and the catering van.
A Kingfisher Airlines Delhi-Ranchi flight got delayed by more than two hours because the catering van offloading food trays inside the aircraft got stuck and could not be removed.
The incident happened on Thursday when the Kingfisher flight (IT 3347) from Delhi to Ranchi was preparing to fly from the Terminal 3 of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. The scheduled departure time of the flight was 5.10pm and all passengers had boarded the aircraft.
It was then that a catering van was supplying food trays inside the aircraft through the rear door. Food is loaded inside the aircraft with the help of a lift mechanism. There was a glitch in the system due to which the lift got stuck.
“It was a strange situation. The lift could not be retracted as if the aircraft was moved, it could have suffered damage. If we tried to remove the van, the lift would have touched other parts of the aircraft and damaged it too,” said an airport source.
“There was no option but to repair the van at the position it was stuck in to avoid more problems,” he said.
As a result, passengers had to patiently bide away their time as airline engineers sorted out the problem. The nearly two-hour long flight got delayed by almost two hours.
“There was a technical issue with the catering van that was offloading food onto the aircraft,” said a Kingfisher spokesman.
“The aircraft departed after the problem was rectified. We regret any inconvenience caused to our valued guests on account of this delay,” he added.