Calcutta: Nine flights from the city were delayed by nearly 30 minutes on an average as passengers and crew members remained stuck in a snarl on EM Bypass on Saturday afternoon. Even then, hundreds of passengers missed their flights.

Charmine Dhawan from Picnic Garden could not board the IndiGo Airline flight to Guwahati at 3pm even though she started from home around noon.

"I was expecting to reach by 1pm but as I got into the app cab, the driver alerted me about the chaos on the Bypass and suggested we take a detour through Tangra," said the manager with the Mahindra Holidays and Resorts.

Dhawan soon realised there was no way she could reach the airport on time and cancelled her ticket on the move. "I booked myself on an 8pm flight. I reached the airport after 2.30pm, boarding for my original flight was over by then. I finally managed to take a 4pm flight as there were seats going empty," she said.

The airline waived the differential price of Rs 1,244.

Baijayonti Chakraborty, a resident of Gariahat, missed her flight to Hyderabad. She was stuck near Science City and a traffic cop redirected them towards Tangra.

"We did not know the lanes of Tangra and kept getting lost. I called up IndiGo and they booked my wife on a 7.30pm flight," said Sanjib, who accompanied Baijayonti to the airport to see her off.

Airport officials said nine flights were delayed between 1pm and 4pm as they waited for passengers and crew to arrive.

"The directorate general of the civil aviation rules specify that boarding for a flight must be closed 45 minutes before departure. We got frantic calls from passengers and crew members to delay departure as they were stuck in traffic. We knew it was for a genuine cause. It would also have been difficult to accommodate all of them on later flights. So we delayed the flights," said the airport manager of a private airline.

An Air India tweet alerted passengers about the Bypass snarl, requesting them to start early.

Air India's flight to Kathmandu, scheduled to take off at 1.45pm, was delayed by 20 minutes as 15-odd passengers and one member of the cabin crew could not reach on time, an official said.

Many passengers were accommodated in later flights. Most airlines waived cancellation charges for changed flights.

The disruptions could have been worse had it been during the morning or evening rush hour. Few flights operate in the afternoon, considered non-peak time.