Weekend travel plans disrupted by unexpected events

Flight delays frustrate 300 passengers in Pune airport. AIX Connect (Air Asia) flight (I5-320) was scheduled to fly from Pune to Kolkata via Bhubaneshwar, but it changed its route to Kolkata directly. Passengers complained that they were stuck in the plane for four hours without any explanation.

A series of flight delays caused inconvenience to over 300 passengers who had booked tickets on three different airlines to and from Pune on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

One of the affected flights was AIX Connect (Air Asia) flight (I5-320), which was supposed to fly from Pune to Kolkata via Bhubaneswar. However, due to some reason, the flight skipped the Bhubaneswar stop and landed in Kolkata directly. Passengers complained that they were not allowed to get off the plane for about four hours. The flight departed from Pune at around 5pm and reached Bhubaneswar by 7pm.

"We reached Kolkata at around 7:05pm instead of Bhubaneswar. We understand that sometimes flights have to be diverted, but why were we kept inside the plane for so long?" a passenger asked, requesting anonymity.

One of the passengers vented his frustration on social media. “We are being held captive by the airline staff at the Kolkata airport. We have been stuck on the plane for four hours and they are not letting us get off,” he wrote on his social media account.

The airline explained the situation in a statement. “Due to bad weather, our flight from Pune to Bhubaneswar had to divert to Kolkata. The crew had exceeded their duty time limits and we had to arrange a new crew. We apologize for the delay and inconvenience caused to our customers,” a spokesperson for the airline said.

The flight finally departed from Kolkata at around 1:24am and arrived in Bhubaneswar at around 2:10am on Sunday, resulting in a seven hour delay.

Two incidents of flight delays and arguments between flyers and staff occurred over the weekend. The first one involved an IndiGo flight from Pune to Delhi, which was scheduled to depart at 11:15pm on Saturday but was delayed by three hours. The passengers were not given any clear explanation or refreshments, and they confronted the ground staff angrily. Dhruv Attri, one of the flyers, said, "The staff blamed the air traffic and weather, but we did not believe them."

The second incident happened with an Air India flight from Delhi to Pune, which was supposed to take off at 9:40pm but was delayed by almost three hours. The passengers were also frustrated by the lack of information and communication from the airline. Arghaya Sen, another flyer, said, "We were kept in the dark about the reason for the delay. People lost their cool as they had to wait for so long."

The airline later said that the delay was caused by an operational issue, but did not elaborate further.