Aircraft shortage leaves passengers stranded

Kolkata: A shortage of aircraft left 800-odd passengers stranded at the airport on Friday morning. Low visibility due to high density of fog diverted six incoming flights late on Thursday, leaving airline officials with no option but to wait for the aircraft to return. Altogether, six flights were delayed and three cancelled. “Our three flights got diverted on Thursday evening. As the same aircraft were scheduled for the other flights on Friday morning, we had to wait,” said a Kingfisher official. Kingfisher flights from Delhi and Chennai were diverted to Bhubaneswar. Also, its flight from Bangalore via Hyderabad was diverted back to Hyderabad. On Friday morning, the Chennai-Kolkata flight landed at 7.30 am and the subsequent Kolkata-Chennai flight took off at 8.30 am almost two and a half hours behind schedule. Again, Kingfisher flights to Bagdogra and Agartala were cancelled.
Even JetLite flights from Mumbai and Bangalore and the Jet Airways flight from Mumbai suffered the same fate on Thursday evening. Although the weather was clear on Thursday morning, JetLite and Jet Airways passengers to Mumbai and JetLite passengers to Bangalore had to wait for the aircraft to return from Guwahati. The late afternoon, Nagpur-bound JetLite flight was also cancelled.
20/12/08 Times of India

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Categories: Airports Dec 2008, Jet Airways Dec 2008, Kingfisher Dec 2008