Delayed ground clearance, A-I doesn't fly

New Delhi: Infrastructural problems at the IGI Airport seem to be causing some troubles for the newly merged Air India and Indian Airlines. On Wednesday night, the Air India flight to Dubai had to be cancelled after the airline decided to fly an Indian Airlines aircraft on the international sector and it took the aircraft almost two hours to reach the international side from the domestic side. The delay caused the flight duty hours of the crew to lapse and passengers had to be accommodated in other flights the next day.
Officials explained that the airline faced this problem when they required a domestic aircraft to fly an international sector. "Normally we try and schedule aircraft so that they fly either in domestic or in international sectors. Sometimes, we need to exchange aircraft which means bringing them from one apron to the other which requires them to cross the active runway and takes really long during peak hours. This is what happened on Thursday," said an official.
According to sources, there had been some internal shuffling of aircraft and the flight that had come from Dubai and is normally scheduled to fly back was assigned for some other sector.
16/05/08 Neha Lalchandani/Times of India

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Categories: NACIL May 2008