Kerala-bound passengers stranded at Doha

Doha: Several Kerala-bound passengers roamed aimlessly at the departure lounge of Doha airport yesterday morning not knowing when their cancelled Air-India Express flight to Kozhikode and Kochi would actually leave. The flight IX404 was to leave Doha at 1am on Saturday with 105 passengers by the budget carrier to the two Kerala cities. When passengers were checking in at 10pm on Friday night, they were told that there could be a delay of one hour.
As it turned out, the delay kept lengthening and was finally scheduled to end at 11pm last night – 22 hours behind schedule.
The flight now should reach Kozhikode by 6.30am on Saturday, said Vijaya Sagalgile, the airline manager in Doha, who too was at the airport trying her best to make sure passengers were comfortable.
The cause for the delay was a “technical problem with a tyre” of the aircraft that was to fly on Friday night from the Bahrain airport, she told Gulf Times. A spare had been flown in to Manama from Mumbai and engineers were working to fix the problem, she said at 7pm yesterday.
The flight was now scheduled to leave Bahrain at 10pm for Doha and the estimated time of departure from Doha would be 11pm, she said.
09/09/07 Arvind Nair/Gulf Times, Qatar

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Categories: Air india Express Sep 2007, Foreign Sep 2007