PUNE: About 150 passengers of Air India's Delhi-Pune flight (AI-2982) spent about two hours sitting in the aircraft anxiously as it returned to the bay after taxiing on Friday afternoon because of a "technical problem".
The flight was supposed to take off from Delhi at 1.05pm and reach Pune at 3.20pm. It finally departed from the national capital around 3pm and landed in the city at 4.42pm.
Delhi's Anand Singh and his friend, Mohit Mahajan, came to Pune on the flight for a business meeting. Singh told TOI, "The boarding started at 12.05pm and we took our seats by 12.20pm. The aircraft, an Airbus A-320, started taxiing at 1pm and stopped behind two other aircraft for its turn to take off. A little later, the pilot announced that they might have to turn around and head back to the bay because of a technical problem. After some time, the aircraft indeed turned around and went to the bay."
Mahajan said they expected some information from the pilot, but nothing came from the deck. "We had an important meeting in Pune, which we missed. Saturday being a weekend, we will have to wait till Monday for it now. We just kept sitting in the aircraft trying to get some inkling as to what was going on. The announcement that there was a technical issue left many passengers worried," he said.
TOI sent a detailed query about the incident to the Air India spokesperson. A reply was awaited till going to press.
Singh said a cabin crew member told him that additional fuel was being taken just in case of any problems because of the bad weather in Pune. "We anticipated that we would be deboarded and taken to the terminal building, but nothing of that sort happened. We just kept sitting in the plane," he said.
Mahajan said the airline should have anticipated this. "Even we knew that the weather in Pune was bad. The pilot, I am sure, knew it too. The additional fuel should have been taken earlier," he said.