Thousands wait at lounges for flights

New Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata: Long waits at lounges, sudden announcements on cancellation or departure of flights and endless trips to the airline inquiry counters -- it was another harrowing day of uncertainty and despair for thousands of Air India passengers across the country and abroad as the pilots' strike continued unabated.
In Mumbai alone, where 24 flights were either cancelled or combined, around 2,700 passengers spent the better part of Tuesday trying to get information on when they could fly. Meanwhile, hundreds of tourists on puja vacation to Andaman & Nicobar have been stranded on the islands for three days after special AI flights got cancelled and two other flights could not land at Port Blair due to bad weather.
The plight of a group of 10 travellers at Delhi's IGI Airport typified the situation. The group, comprising workers on their way to Bihar from Dubai, was booked on an Air India flight slated to take off from Dubai at 12.04am (Dubai time) on Tuesday. After it got cancelled, they were placed on the 4:30am flight. They hung around at the airport but that didn't help. Finally booked onto an Emirates flight, they arrived in Delhi at three in the afternoon (local time), only to find their flight to Patna cancelled.The group was given seats on another plane scheduled for 7.20pm on Wednesday.
Meanwhile in Kolkata, following a plea by passengers stranded in Andamans, Union railway minister Mamata Banerjee urged her partyman and Union minister of state for shipping Mukul Roy to arrange for a ship to transport those stranded to Kolkata.
At Mumbai, though AI was able to accommodate all stranded passengers on other carriers, lack of cancellation alerts on the airline's website left fliers in the lurch. Even AI's booking counter at Mumbai airport wore a desolate look.
Meanwhile, wary passengers have already started shifting carriers. Travel agents, too, were flooded with calls from national and international clients who were anxiously looking for alternatives.
30/09/09 Times of India

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Categories: Air India Domestic Sep 2009, Airports Sep 2009, Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2009, NACIL Sep 2009