Bad weather diverts 11 Delhi-bound flights to Jaipur; passengers stranded for 10 hours, pilots refuse to fly
Pilots cited duty-time limits; aircraft from Singapore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and others rerouted to Jaipur.
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Terminal - 2 at Jaipur International Airport.
Jaipur: Eleven Delhi-bound flights were diverted to Jaipur airport on Monday after bad weather over the national capital prevented landings, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded — some for as long as ten hours — and forcing two pilots to refuse onward departures after their duty-time limits ran out.
The worst-affected aircraft was an Air India Express service from Guwahati to Delhi. Unable to land at Indira Gandhi International Airport, the flight was first sent to Lucknow. After taking off again from there, it was still denied permission to land in Delhi and was eventually diverted to Jaipur, where it touched down at 6:15 am. Passengers on board had by then been in transit and waiting for nearly ten hours.
Even after Delhi cleared the aircraft for departure from Jaipur, the pilot declined to operate the flight, citing the expiry of mandated duty hours. The service was finally pushed back by about five hours and departed for Delhi at 11:30 am. A separate diverted flight from Rewa met the same fate after its pilot refused to fly onwards; those passengers were taken to Delhi by bus.
Through the course of the night, planes originally bound for Delhi from Singapore, Pune, Mumbai, Nashik, Amritsar, Kolkata and Indore were brought down at Jaipur. According to airport sources, seven of the diverted flights were sent on by late night, while four others could only resume their journeys by 11 am.
Passenger anger grew sharply as airlines repeatedly revised departure times. An Air India Express flight from Jaipur to Bengaluru, scheduled to leave at 10:55 pm, also failed to take off on time, with the carrier citing an aircraft shortage. Travellers caused a commotion at the boarding gate before being accommodated on a different flight the next morning.
Many passengers ended up spending the entire night at the airport. After eventually getting on their way, several took to social media to call the airlines’ handling of the disruption irresponsible. Operational difficulties linked to pilot shortages and flight duty time limitation rules have surfaced before, and the latest disruption has again added to passenger hardship.
