Jet gifts tickets to delayed flyers

After being cooped inside an aircraft for four hours followed by an impromptu protest on the airfield and a verbal spat with the Jet Airways crew, the 100-odd Hyderabad-bound passengers had a reason to smile when they reached their destination on Friday night.

After being cooped inside an aircraft for four hours followed by an impromptu protest on the airfield and a verbal spat with the Jet Airways crew, the 100-odd Hyderabad-bound passengers had a reason to smile when they reached their destination on Friday night.

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The airline gave a free ticket to each passenger on the Mumbai-Hyderabad sector. “It was a good gesture after the chaos,” said J Ram, a Mumbai-based businessman, who was on the flight.

The flight scheduled to leave Mumbai at 6.50pm was initially delayed initially as the crew was waiting for a group of passengers arriving on a delayed JetLite flight from Goa. By the time the JetLite flight reached the city, the co-pilot’s permitted duty time had expired.

“It was wrong on the airline’s part to keep us waiting because another flight was delayed. The least they could have done was to give us correct updates on the flight’s status,” said another passenger. A Jet Airways spokesperson declined comment.

Fog in Delhi on Friday morning also delayed flights in Mumbai, which resulted in cascading delays forcing two Delhi-bound flights to be diverted to the city.

The airport has witnessed at least five cases of long delays and passenger inconvenience in the last 12 days because of runway repairs in Mumbai, airline technical snags and erratic weather patterns.