350 passengers made to wait for hours as pilot refuses to fly delayed London-Delhi Air India flight

Around 350 passengers on Sunday were left stranded at the Jaipur airport for hours after a pilot of an Air India London-Delhi flight refused to fly the plane. The plane had made an emergency landing in Jaipur given the bad weather conditions at the Delhi airport. The flight was originally scheduled to arrive in Delhi at approximately 4 am, India Today reported.

The plane hovered in the sky for around 10 minutes before it was diverted to Jaipur. After around two hours, the Delhi Air Traffic Control (ATC) granted clearance to the flight for resuming its journey to Delhi along with other flights diverted to Jaipur.

Despite this, the pilot refused to continue the flight and left the plane. He cited flight duty time limitations and duty hours as the reason behind his refusal. Due to the pilot's refusal to fly the plane, passengers had to seek alternate arrangements to reach Delhi. After about three hours, some of the passengers were transported from Jaipur to Delhi via road whereas others took the same flight to Delhi after a replacement crew was arranged.

Adit, a passenger on board the flight, tweeted about the passengers' plight and said Air India did not make arrangements to send them to Delhi.

He also tagged Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jaipur MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and wrote: "Passengers of @airindia AI112 flying from London to Delhi have been diverted to Jaipur due to bad weather but passengers have not been assisted with any recourse to reaching their final destinations. @JM_Scindia please assist us urgently. We did manage to speak with @Ra_THORe despite which we have received no assistance from the authorities at #JaipurAirport".

Air India responded to Adit's tweet and said that the airline is trying its best to minimise the incovenience caused to the customers. To this, Adit replied and said that the Jaipur airport staff have "been absolutely inept and incorrigible to provide us with any assistance". He added the offer to passengers to travel to Delhi by coach is "absolutely damnable and ludicrous". Adit urged Air India to coordinate with the Jaipur airport staff and have the passengers flown to Delhi at the earliest.

Meanwhile, an Air India spokesperson said that it is misleading to say that pilots of the Delhi-London flight (AI112) left the aircraft citing their duty time is over.  The spokesperson added the cockpit crew was under flight duty time limitations (FDTL) when the aircraft was waiting for the Delhi weather conditions to improve and take off.

Flight duty time limitations (FDTL) refer to the maximum number of hours a pilot can fly in a given period of time. It added that a fresh set of crew was immediately arranged to operate the flight. Air India spokesperson further mentioned: “Passengers were served refreshments after mandatory immigration clearance at Jaipur airport and were flown into Delhi at 2 pm”.

(With India Today inputs)

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