AI passengers stranded at Bhubaneswar airport

Bhubaneswar: Air India passengers scheduled to leave the Bhubaneswar airport on Sunday evening for New Delhi have vented their displeasure over the attitude of the Biju Patnaik International Airport authorities after they were allegedly kept on tenterhooks about the departure of their flight for several hours yesterday.

The stranded passengers alleged that airport authorities did not confirm when the flight will land at the Bhubaneswar airport and depart for New Delhi.

“At 10 pm, the airport authorities rescheduled the Air India flight to 1.10 am and later to 2 am. Finally, they said the flight has been cancelled,” said Shishir Das, a stranded passenger.

“When we called up the customer care of the airlines, they said the flight has already departed. Therefore, the airlines could not cancel the ticket,” he added.

Shubhankar Samal, another stranded passenger, said; “From Delhi, I was supposed to catch the connecting flight to Vienna in Austria at 2.10 am. Besides, I had co-passengers, who had some urgent work like meeting or medical urgency or were returning to their workplace,” adding that the airlines is not taking the responsibility for internal problems.

Meanwhile, Bhubaneswar airpor director Sharad Kumar readily admitted that there have been delays in the arrival of Air India flights for the last few days.

Elaborating on the recent development Kumar stated, “Pilot of AI-073 noticed some technical snag and diverted the flight to Kolkata. A,t around 12.30 am the airlines cancelled the ight.”

He also agreed the passengers who were leaving for Delhi from Bhubaneswar must have suffered a lot.

Recently, due to fog in Kolkata, five flights were diverted to the Bhubaneswar airport. However, passengers of the flights expressed disatisfaction over the arrangements made by the airport authorities during their overnight stay here.