Hundreds of passengers on Air India’s international flights left stranded in Delhi by up to seven hours

Sources said operations of two international flights of Air India were hit due to unavailability of crew and problem with air-conditioning system.

About 170 passengers of Air India’s Delhi-Kochi-Dubai flight, scheduled to depart at 5.10 am, were held up at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi for almost six hours, with the airline saying that it was due to technical reasons.

Air India’s Delhi-Kochi-Dubai and Delhi-Tokyo flights were delayed by six and seven hours respectively since Friday night. (Reuters/Photo for representation)

However, airline sources claimed that the delay was because of non-availability of crew.

“AI 933 Delhi-Kochi-Dubai is held up at Delhi due to technical reasons. Revised ETD is 1100 hrs. We sincerely apologise for the delay and inconvenience caused to our esteemed passengers,” Air India said in a tweet.

Sources said the crew issue was resolved and the flight took off at 11 am.

Passengers of Air India’s Delhi-Tokyo flight, scheduled to leave on Friday night, were also remained stranded for almost seven hours due to a problem with the air conditioning system, sources said.

The Flight AI 306 with 171 passengers on board was supposed to depart from IGIA at 9.15 pm yesterday, but it took off at 4 am after the problem was fixed, they said.

Passengers of both the flights took to Twitter to vent their anger.