Delayed, Cancelled, Rescheduled: Plight Of Air India Passengers Stranded In Phuket For 3 Days

New Delhi: Over 100 New Delhi-bound passengers of an Air India flight are stranded in Thailand’s Phuket for over 80 hours following multiple delays due to technical faults, according to several posts by affected people on social media.

Air India flight AI-377 was scheduled to take off from Phuket International Airport for New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport late evening on November 16, the passengers stated. However, they were told by airline officials that the flight was delayed by six hours due to a technical glitch.

Another flight was then prepared for the stranded people. According to passengers’ posts, they were told it was the same aircraft, with the fault being fixed.

The flight did take off but about two-and-a-half hours later, it returned to land at Phuket itself.

The passengers were told that another technical fault was detected. The passengers have been stuck in Phuket since then, and have not been getting any satisfactory response from airline representatives, they claimed.

However, the airline said that the flight was initially cancelled after the crew onboard ran into Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) issues. Later, the Airbus A320 aircraft encountered technical issues and was taken back to Phuket.

Airline officials, however, said that arrangements were made for passengers’ accommodation and they were also given reimbursement for cancelled flight.

“Most of the passengers of flight AI-377 have been flown back to India, with the last batch of passengers scheduled to fly back today,” Moneycontrol quoted an airline executive as saying.