Passengers of Bengaluru-bound plane 'locked' in aerobridge for over an hour

In a new dent in the wing of civil aviation in India, passengers of a Bengaluru-bound plane were “locked up” in a closed aerobridge at the Delhi airport for over an hour as their flight was delayed due to weather disruption which caused the incoming crew to “exceed their duty time limit”.

Flyers ready to board a plane to Karnataka capital Bengaluru were kept waiting for over an hour in an aerobridge at Delhi airport on Tuesday, a video on social media showed. The passengers, including senior citizens, were “locked up” in the aerobridge, a vlogger said on social media.

A video of the incident was uploaded on social media and showed passengers asking for water.

The incident occurred when a SpiceJet flight from Delhi to Bengaluru was delayed by three hours due to weather disruption which caused the incoming crew to “exceed their duty time limit”, according to the airline.

A digital creator - Soumil Agarwal - who makes travel vlogs, was one of the passengers, and uploaded a video of the incident. Agarwal has over 10,000 followers on Instagram. Agarwal's post has over 60,000 likes at the time this article was being written, and showed several passengers asking for water from the authorities.

“I understand that sometime flight gets delayed. But making the passengers cross the Boarding gate, then closing the flight gates and not letting your passengers go beyond any of these 2 ways, and locking them up in the middle is not cool,” Agarwal wrote on Instagram.

“When passengers asked to open the boarding gate so that they can rest back at the waiting area, the authorities denied it and went missing, when senior citizens asked for water because they were locked in there for more than an hour and had no water, the authorities didn’t give them water and told them to ask for water in the flight once the gates are open. And when people asked them on how much tentative time would it take for that- they had no answer. Who treats their customers like this?” he added.

The incident comes in the midst of several aviation related instances of late, from passengers urinating on co-flyers to fake bomb threats, which have left flyers wary.

READ | Urination row, passengers left behind, bomb scare: Latest shockers for flyers

In relation to making passengers wait on a closed aerobridge for over an hour, a SpiceJet spokesperson said in a statement that the incoming crew was not legal to operate the flight to Bengaluru as per duty time limitation and that the crew was arranged from another incoming flight.

"Water was served to passengers who were on the lower floor near aircraft door and aerobridge passage. The video was shot outside of the boarding gate that had limited access. All passengers on the said flight were provided service recovery vouchers," the statement added.

In another instance, more than 50 passengers were left behind by a domestic carrier as it took off without them while they were waiting to board the plane on a shuttle bus.

(With PTI inputs)