AI’s flight to Jeddah delayed by more than 32 hours

MUMBAI: Given at 11pm on Tuesday night, 300 passengers who were to travel on a Mumbai-Hyderabad-Jeddah Air India flight on Monday afternoon were still in the city.

MUMBAI: Given at 11pm on Tuesday night, 300 passengers who were to travel on a Mumbai-Hyderabad-Jeddah Air India flight on Monday afternoon were still in the city. The delay had crossed 32 hours.

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Scheduled to leave Mumbai at 3pm on Monday, AI 965 reported a last minute snag. On Tuesday afternoon, the airline said that the flight will leave at 11pm but it didn’t. At the time of going to press, the flight was scheduled to leave at 1am.

Sources in the engineering section were not surprised as the Boeing 747 (VT-EVA), among a few in the fleet, has been flying with little rest. “This route is a single aircraft operation. This aircraft is also used for Gulf-bound operations connecting Hyderabad and Kochi,” said a source who did not wish to be named, and added that the spare aircraft was on VIP duty.

HT’s report on poor upkeep of some AI jumbos, published on August 19, had mentioned that emergency buttons in 7 of 14 toilets in the same aircraft did not work. Sources added that the spare aircraft was sent to ferry vice-president Hamid Ansari, who recently flew down to Venezuela to attend NAM summit.