Chaos erupts after Delhi-London Air India flight delayed by 3 hours, DGCA warns | Latest News India

NEW DELHI: After a three-hour delay in takeoff for Air India’s Delhi-London flight (AI 161) and chaos among passengers at the airport on Tuesday morning, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has warned all airlines not to book passengers on “unserviceable seats”, which are “not only causing inconvenience to travellers but also inviting a serious safety concern’’.

DGCA got involved after the London flight failed to take off on time. Even as passengers complained of some crew members reporting late for the flight and chaos over seat allocation on account of some seats not “working”, the airline said that the delay was caused by the previous day’s bad weather, leading to flight cancellations.

AI 161 departed at 5.45am as against the scheduled time of 2.45am.

However, it wasn’t just the delay that passengers had to contend with. One passenger told HT that business class passengers were downgraded due to the chaos, and some could not even fly as “their seats were not working”. The passenger, who didn’t want to be identified, also said that crew members came late and in batches. An Air India official said that the crew members had “crew duty time limitations”.

“Incoming flights to Delhi got diverted due to the inclement weather. There were quite a few connecting passengers in these Delhi-bound flights for AI 161. To ensure all these passengers could be accommodated to AI 161, the departure of this flight had to be delayed till the flights diverted could come back to Delhi,’’ said the airline’s spokesperson.

DGCA, however, has taken a severe view of all developments, and warned airlines that they shouldn’t be booking seats that are not fully functional.

“It is hereby advised to ensure that airline shall not book passengers beyond the serviceable seats meeting the approved design specification available in the aircraft, released for scheduled services. Any non-compliance in this regard shall be viewed seriously,’’ said the DGCA in a note to all airlines issued on Tuesday afternoon.