Transit passengers stuck with no connecting flight

New Delhi: Passengers, already hassled by flight delays and cancellations, were at the receiving end of the pilots' strike on Thursday as well. As more flights were cancelled, the airport ticket counters saw a steady stream of people coming in for alternate bookings and refunds. A new problem cropped up for the airline in the form of transit passengers, who arrived in Delhi but had no way of getting to their final destination.
To shed the increasing load, Air India has been booking seats for its passengers on other airlines. On Thursday, while several passengers managed to arrive in Delhi on other airlines like Spice-Jet and Jetlite, they found themselves stuck here for lack of connecting options, especially since Delhi saw a much larger volume of stranded passengers than any other city. "We were booked from Bangalore to Allahabad via Delhi on Air India. We covered the Bangalore-Delhi leg on SpiceJet, but the timings were different and we missed our Allahabad flight. We arrived in Delhi at 11am, but have been waiting for the last two hours for the airline to make alternate arrangements for us," said Anita, who was travelling with her husband and three children.
Bidyavati Tiwari, who travelled on the same flight and was waiting to go to Varanasi, said: "My niece is getting married on May 1 and I have to get there to make the arrangements, since I'm the eldest in the family. We have been offered seats on Kingfisher Airlines to Lucknow, from where we will somehow go to Varanasi."
Pankaj Singh, a government employee, landed in Delhi from Lucknow at 10.30am, and was told that there might be a seat for him on a 2.30pm flight to Chennai.
29/04/11 Times of India

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Categories: Air India Apr 2011, Airports Apr 2011