Several passengers on the Air India flight from San Francisco to Mumbai, which was grounded at the Calcutta airport on Tuesday, alleged that proper communication and information from the airline, which was lacking, would have reduced their problems.
Some of the passengers were stuck in Calcutta for over 18 hours.
The Boeing 777-200LR aircraft had landed at Calcutta airport at 12.47am for refuelling and was scheduled to take off at 2am, reaching Mumbai at 4.30am. But the aircraft remained grounded in Calcutta on Tuesday.
Airport officials said it got stuck after a technical snag was detected in the aircraft during a pre-takeoff maintenance.
“After five hours in the aircraft, we had to deplane. Initially, we thought since refuelling was on, it would be a 15-minute delay or so. But the time rolled on, finally we were stuck for 5 hours,” said Kader Balakrishnan on the flight from San Francisco.
Kader is on a trip to Chennai with his family.
“We were told there was some maintenance needed for the left engine. We had already flown for 15 hours and were wondering what went wrong,” said Kader.
The crash of Air India flight AI 171 in Ahmedabad on Thursday was still fresh in the minds of the passengers.
“I was scared when we learnt that one engine had developed a snag. Many passengers were scared too,” said H. Yadav from Mumbai.
Vijay Satra, 61, a chartered accountant from Mumbai, said the Ahmedabad crash had made passengers more patient.
“Passengers were grateful that there was no untoward incident and were cooperating with the authorities,” said Satra.
After five hours in the aircraft, when they reached the airport, several passengers complained of a lack of communication and information from the airline.
At the airport, there was a lack of clarity on when they would get a flight to Mumbai. The passengers were shifted to hotels.
The Satras had travelled from Toronto to San Francisco by Air Canada on June 11. Even then, they had faced a technical snag in the flight, but the response was different from what they faced on Tuesday.
“The pilot had come to each of our seats and told us that there was a technical snag and it would take about an hour and a half. If anyone felt claustrophobic, they could get off the plane,” said Kalpana Vijay Satra, travelling with husband Vijay Satra.
S.R. Veeraraghavan, a businessman who travels frequently to San Francisco, said that at 4.30am it was declared that the aircraft was not viable to fly because one engine had failed. “Maintenance has to be proper. We were lucky that we came to know before the flight took off for Mumbai. What if something had happened mid-air,” he said.
“The worst part is we talk about tragedies for four days, but from the fifth day we move on and stop talking about it,” he said.
Initially, we were told the flight was not getting a signal from Mumbai to take off, said Kalpana.
The airline made arrangements for the passengers to travel to Mumbai on Tuesday night. In the evening, when they reached the airport there was better communication and information from the airline staff, some of the passengers said.
“There was airline staff to usher us and guide us. It was helpful,” said Kalpana.