Chaos in the air

Air India's bag of trouble gets heavier by the day on T3

As if the intra-organisation squabbling and a receding clientele was not causing enough problems for Air India, the recent glitches in flight schedules are posing a huge challenge to the state-owned carrier.



Ever since Air India shifted operations to the new T3 terminal at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, the passengers are having harrowing time. The flight schedules continued to be affected on Sunday with about 90 per cent of the operations delayed by 15 minutes or more.

The airlines said some of the delays happened because some flights had to wait for passengers from abroad as they were running almost empty.

Vijay Singh, who boarded Mumbai-Delhi Jetlite S2-102 flight at 9:45 am missed his flight to Varanasi which was scheduled to fly at 2 pm in shifting his luggage from domestic terminal to T3 terminal.

"My flight started 45 minutes late from Mumbai. Then it almost took me another 45 minutes to get my baggage. I had to fly to Varanasi and there was no taxi outside to take me to T3 terminal so I took shuttle which met with an accident and I could not catch the Spicejet flight to Varanasi. The airlines was giving me a Tuesday flight but after request I some how managed to get Monday afternoon flight," said Vijay Singh
Furious passengers who had similar experience at the airport made the youtube video uploaded by Anees Bhasin, Mumbai-based photographer, a hit.

The day MiD DAY reported about the video there were around 97 hits and with in few days the hits have gone up to 32,000. Passengers have also started sharing there experiences by posting comments and circulating the video link.

Baggage continued to be the main problem and as the frequency of flight increased on Sunday, after shifting of two more carriers, the shortage of baggage belts left the passengers harried.

To resolve the issue the airline is notifying all its passengers through SMS till November 30 to reach the airport well in advance.

Most of the Jet and Kingfisher flights went as per schedule through the Sunday morning but some flights got delayed in the later half of the day due to late arrival of aircrafts. Some of passengers of Jet flights expressed their anguish over delays and had heated argument with the staff.