Pax furious over flight delays at Pune airport

With many flights getting delayed over the past two to three days, passengers flying out of Pune airport are facing a lot of inconvenience

PUNE: With many flights getting delayed over the past two to three days, passengers flying out of Pune airport are facing a lot of inconvenience. Flights to Delhi and Hyderabad were delayed by over five to six hours on Tuesday and Wednesday while irate passengers headed to Prayagraj from Pune protested inside the airport on Wednesday.

With many flights getting delayed over the past two to three days, passengers flying out of Pune airport are facing a lot of inconvenience. (HT FILE)

Divanshu Aggarwal, a flyer travelling from Pune airport on February 26, said, “This is happening at Pune airport for Air India Express flight IX-1150 scheduled at 00.30 hours on February 26. It is delayed for the last four hours and they are not providing any support but misleading the passengers. Ms. Prajakta GSM responsible for the flight has not shown up and junior staff does not have any information. They just rescheduled the flight. There is a technical issue in the flight and it is highly risky for passengers to board this flight. They are not providing any replacement flight for this and other Air India Express flights are taking off since then.”

While the flight finally took off from Pune airport at around 6.30 am on Wednesday, passengers were furious over the delay by the airline. In response to the complaint lodged by Divanshu, Air India Express issued an official statement saying, “This isn’t the experience we aim to provide, Divanshu! Could you please provide us your booking details (PNR) via DM? This will help us investigate further.”

Another flyer who did not wish to be named and travelled from Pune airport to Hyderabad on February 25, said, “Kindly instruct Alliance Air to improve airline facilities. Flight no 9I-868 from Pune to Hyderabad was supposed to take off at 20.30 hours today and it got delayed till 23.55 hours. The last five passengers are waiting at the airport only. No staff was available to assist the passengers. Are there any rules or penalties applicable to airlines if they behave like this? And please don’t say that the flight got delayed due to a technical glitch. When passengers get delayed by even five minutes at the airport, the airlines very conveniently say ‘Sorry you are late. No refund and no access to the flight’.”

Vipul Alekar, a frequent flyer, said, “We can understand if there is a delay of 15 to 20 minutes due to some issue but flights are getting delayed by five to 10 hours which is not acceptable. I missed an important business meeting in Delhi when my flight from Pune got delayed around one month back.”