Officers to serve IA flight passengers

Passengers of the Indian flight to Singapore, will be a privileged lot as they’ll be served by the officers of the airlines instead of the crew, reports GC Shekhar.

Passengers of the Indian flight to Singapore, leaving Chennai at 12.30 am on Wednesday, will be a privileged lot as they’ll be served by the officers of the airlines instead of regular in-flight crew.

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The flash strike that affected most of the national carrier’s services from Chennai compelled the Indian management to take this decision since they did not want the fully booked flight to be cancelled. Already three international flights from Chennai — to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Muscat — had to be cancelled.

“Since our return flight from Singapore is also full, with many holidaying passengers returning home, we wanted to have at least one flight in this very important sector,” a senior manager of Indian said.

Since most international passengers were told about the “indefinite delay” on Tuesday night, the airlines did not provide any hotel accommodation for the stranded passengers.

Out of the 30 flights out of Chennai 13 were cancelled including three international flights to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Muscat.

Many passengers with connecting international flights from Mumbai and Delhi were worse off and were given preferences by other airlines.

While most of the top airlines like Jet, Kingfisher and Deccan were already fully booked companies like Go Air and Spice Jet were flooded with frantic passengers looking for last minute vacancies.