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Air India Delhi-Vancouver flight faces 22-hour delay, here's why
A Delhi-Vancouver flight of Air India was delayed by 22 hours on Saturday, and finally took off in the early hours of Sunday.
An international Air India flight, originally scheduled to take off on Saturday, departed in the early hours of Sunday after a significant delay. The Delhi-Vancouver Air India flight faced a delay of 22 hours and eventually took off at 3:15 am on Sunday, June 2.
The flight was initially scheduled to take off at 5:30 am on Saturday but a "technical" issue forced the airline to reschedule it. Another reason for its long delay was the crew coming under the mandatory Flight Duty Time Limitations.
"The Delhi-Vancouver flight of Air India, which was to depart on Saturday morning, finally left at around 3.15 am on Sunday," PTI reported citing sources.
An Air India spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday, “AI 185...was delayed because of technical issues and subsequently due to crew coming under the mandatory Flight Duty Time Limitations.”
Read more: DGCA issues notice to Air India after international flight delayed by over 24 hrs
This was at least the third time in the last one week that Air India's ultra-long haul flights had to face inordinate delay for one reason or the other. In the past, Air India has refrained from issuing official statements regarding the delay despite heightened passenger complaints.
Earlier, after a delay of more than 30 hours, the airline's Delhi-San Francisco flight, originally scheduled to depart at around 1530 hrs on Thursday, took off at 2155 hrs the next day.
On Saturday, the airline apologised and offered a travel voucher of USD 350 each to the passengers of the San Francisco flight for the huge delay, owing to multiple factors including the non-functioning of the Boeing 777 aircraft's air-conditioning system.
Read more: Why Air India, which dominates India-US routes, has become hell for passengers
Formerly owned by the Indian government, Air India was privatised and handed over to the Tata Group in January 2022.
Given the recent delays and failure to take due care of the passengers, the DGCA issued a notice to Air India, seeking a response. The delay of two flighs was mentioned in the notice - AI 183 from Delhi to San Francisco on May 30 and AI 179 from Mumbai to San Francisco on May 24.
(With inputs from PTI)
