Flight delay triggers protest

to depart at 7.05 am was delayed due to technical reasons. Departure was shifted to 10.30 am. Some passengers were agitated. Issue was handled by Jetlite staff,” said an MIAL spokesperson.

A Jet Airways official confirmed that the flight was delayed due to a technical snag. “We were able to get another aircraft by 10.30 am and the flight departed thereafter. We tried to accomodate some passengers in other airlines as well,” an airline official said.

Goodae said he was a frequent traveller on this route and that a delay by 30 minutes to an hour was ‘understandable’ but a delay of more than three hours had irked almost all passengers.

According to current Civil Aviation Requirement,airlines do not have to compensate passengers for delays due to technical glitches,but the Directorate General of Civil Aviation is currently working on an amendment to this rule.

A draft CAR was released earlier in June which talks about compensating passengers in case airlines delay or cancel flights. It is not yet clear if the delay due to a ‘technical glitch’ would be covered for compensation.

According to the Air Passengers Association of India president Sudhakar Reddy,passengers ought to be compensated for any sort of delay – including delays due to technical snag. “We are recommending that airlines compensate passengers for delays due to technical glitches,as it is the fault of the airline,” Reddy said.

After departure at 10.40 am,passengers reached Nagpur a little before 12 noon. According to the DGCA proposal – which is yet to come into force — for a flight block time of upto two and a half hours,the compensation to each passenger should be upto Rs 2,000.

As many as 180 passengers were on the flight to Nagpur on Wednesday.