AI ties itself in knots over staff crunch, flights delayed

New Delhi: A diverted flight and shortage of cabin crew caused Air India some anxious moments on Thursday, not to mention the harassment to passengers. Trouble started when poor visibility led to congestion over Delhi and the flight that took off from Bangalore for the capital at 6.15am had to be diverted to Jaipur.
After landing in the capital, the aircraft was to operate on the Delhi-Bangalore sector at 10.30am. But since it was stuck in Jaipur, AI had to make alternate arrangements. There was a spare aircraft available at IGI with a set of pilots. The airline decided to use the cabin crew that had landed in IGI at 10.40am after operating a Delhi-Lucknow-Delhi flight.
Finally, the 10.30am Delhi-Bangalore flight flew out of IGI after a delay of a couple of hours. This aircraft and its crew was then supposed to fly back to Delhi to operate the 2pm flight, obviously with a delay. But after reaching Bangalore, the cabin crew said it could not operate that flight as their duty time limitation of eight hours in a day had expired.
Passengers waiting to board the 2pm flight to Delhi got stuck. Luckily for AI, it had another flight for Delhi at 4.30pm and it merged the two. Thankfully, both the flights were half full. Passengers of the two flights could be adjusted in the 4.30pm departure.
06/06/10 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India

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Categories: Air India Domestic Jun 2009, Airports Jun 2010, NACIL Jun 2010