300 stuck for 33 hrs in Vienna as AI’s London flight diverted

Although passengers were provided hotel accommodation in Vienna, they said they didn’t have access to their luggage.

Around 300 passengers of the Mumbai-London Air India (AI) flight AI 131, which departed from the city at 6.30am on Tuesday, were stranded at Vienna for nearly 33 hours after the flight was diverted owing to technical reasons.

Representational image (REUTERS)

Although passengers were provided hotel accommodation in Vienna, they said they didn’t have access to their luggage. Moreover, they said that though AI asked them to reach the airport by 7am on Wednesday, they were stuck at the airport the whole day and the flight took off only at 11pm. The passengers included 18 scientists, who were going to attend a three-day workshop at Warwick University on Wednesday.

The flight arrived at Vienna around 2pm on Tuesday. Air India chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani said the flight had to make an emergency landing due to a technical issue. “Our engineers fixed the issue. Passengers were shifted to transit hotel on Tuesday. AI staff has been taking care of them,” said Lohani.

However, passengers said they were made to wait at the airport for several hours before being allotted hotels. One of the passengers, Priya Joshi, a scientist with Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, (IITM) Pune, said, “We were in an unhygienic condition as we couldn’t access our luggage. We had no clue how long we would have to wait at Vienna.” Dr A K Sahai, a senior scientist at IITM, said, “We were told the flight was diverted due to oil leakage issue. AI made us wait in the aircraft for three and half hours in Vienna. Then we waited for another seven hours at the airport. Only after that were we allotted rooms.”