A number of flights belonging to SpiceJet witnessed inordinate delays since Monday, inconveniencing hundreds of flyers.
Flights from Delhi to Pune and back, Pune to Dubai, Delhi to Patna etc witnessed long delays.
Passengers said that they didn’t get proper intimation or response from the airline.
Huzepha Kapuswala, who was travelling to Pune from Dubai on a SpiceJet flight (SG-52) with his 83-year-old grandmother, said that his flight was delayed by 7 hours. “The flight should have taken off from Dubai around 12am but finally took off at 7am on Tuesday. No one knew about the delay until they reached the airport. There was no accountability at all,” he told TOI.
On X (formerly Twitter), several flyers complained about flight delays and lack of information from the airline. “Passengers of Delhi-Pune flight super delayed by almost 10 hours. They even said that no pilots were available,” one of them wrote. Chetna Pillay, another flyer wrote, “The departure time was 8:05pm (Monday). It again got delayed and a new time of 11pm was given. Again, it was rescheduled to 1:15am (Tuesday) and then 2am…”
Anshumaan Singh’s flight from Delhi to Patna was scheduled to take off at 8:35am on Monday. However, the flight took off at 6:15pm, a delay of around 10 hours. “The airline kept postponing the flight every 2 hours. I am from Delhi so was at home and left for the airport accordingly. But many flyers were at the airport. I won’t ever fly on the airline again as I was going to attend a wedding and lost a major chunk of the function because of the same,” Singh said.
Demonstration flights like the one conducted today pave the way for future standardisation, qualification and adoption for 100 per cent SAF flying, as governments adopt broader strategies to support the production and scale up of SAF. The A380 demonstration flight underlines the performance and compatibility of SAF, making it a safe and reliable fuel source.
The airline agreed that they faced multiple flight delays. “Three SpiceJet flights from Pune were delayed yesterday (Monday) due to multiple reasons, including grounding of an aircraft and bad weather in Delhi, which led to multiple diversions resulting in flight time duty limitation (FTDL) restrictions of operating crew,” an airline spokesperson said.Flyers said that the aviation ministry needed to look into the issue. “We pay heavy amount as fares and delays affect our trips and plans. Airlines should stop taking passengers for granted,” Karun Dhatre, a frequent flyer, said.
Last week, more than 100 flyers set to travel to Dubai from here on a SpiceJet flight on Wednesday were left waiting for over 10 hours, for a journey that usually takes just around two hours or so to traverse 2,000-odd kilometres. Regular passengers also claimed that delays have become a regular trend with the sole direct flight to the Middle East from Pune over recent times.
Flight SG-51 was scheduled to take off at 8pm on November 22 to head to Dubai. Since this is an international flight, passengers had arrived at Pune airport by 4pm or even earlier. However, it finally only took off around 6.20am the next date.
