After a massive delay of 30 hours, the Delhi-San Francisco Air India flight, which was supposed to take off on May 30, finally took off from the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport on Saturday.
As per reports, the flight was originally scheduled to take off from the Delhi airport at 3.30 pm on Thursday. Initially, owing to operational reasons, it was delayed by six hours before getting rescheduled for Friday. As per reports, Air India also had to wait for a crew change and also offered a full refund and hotel stay to all the passengers.
Air India flight delay: Passengers' ordeal
It has been reported that over 200 passengers dealt with inconvenience amid a severe heatwave.
Passengers on an Air India flight claimed they were left stranded on the plane without air conditioning for over 8 hours, leading to some fainting, according to reports on Thursday.
Air India: Flight delayed due to operational reasons
Acording to PTI, the flight was delayed due to operational reasons and departed from Delhi at 9.55 pm on Friday after being rescheduled multiple times since Thursday.
Considering there are night landing restrictions in San Francisco, Air India officials have sought requisite permission to land there.
The duration of the Delhi-San Francisco flight is nearly 16 hours and by the time it arrives in the American city, it would be night there, the PTI report added.
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Air India flight delay: DGCA's show cause notice
Taking cognisnce of the issue and other similar instances of delay, the civil aviation watchdog Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday issued a show cause notice to Air India.
The statutory body in its notice mentioned the AI 183 Delhi-San Francisco and AI 179 Mumbai-San Francisco flight delays, which happened within a week's time.
