Passengers spend night on aerobridge as IndiGo’s Lucknow-Hyderabad flight gets delayed
Around 112 passengers of an IndiGo flight from Lucknow to Hyderabad were forced to spend the night on an aerobridge at the Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport here after their Airbus A320neo aircraft developed a technical snag, said an official of the AAI on Friday.
Spokesperson of the Airport Authority of India, Lucknow Airport, Sanjay Narain, said, “We were informed that IndiGo’s flight 6E 278, scheduled to take off at 9:15 pm on Thursday, was delayed by over eight hours. The flight was scheduled to land in Hyderabad at 11:15 pm on Thursday, however, it landed at 8:19 am on Friday.”
Manager of the airlines, SM Sayyed, confirmed that the flight was late by around eight hours. “The aircraft developed technical snag,” he said but refused to comment on why the passengers were not taken to a hotel.
As a result, passengers kept waiting on the aerobridge itself. Some passengers told HT that those “left stranded on the aerobridge included people of all age groups, some of whom were wheelchair-bound”.
An aerobridge is a movable connector between the airport terminal gate and the aircraft.
Engine Trouble
Airbus A320neo aircraft fitted with unmodified Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines have been giving trouble for some time now. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked airlines to replace these engines with modified low pressure turbine (LPT) engines.
The DGCA has given certain deadlines to both IndiGo and GoAir, both of which use P&W engine aircraft. While GoAir has reportedly replaced all its 13 unmodified P&W engines, IndiGo, which has more than 90 such planes, has been given a deadline of January 31, 2020, to complete the replacement process.