Mumbai, January 15: Terminal trouble: Bollywood actor Riteish Deshmukh, who was booked on a Kingfisher Airlines flight from Delhi to Mumbai on Thursday evening, was stranded at IGI Airport for two hours. He said the ‘flight guys’ told him there was a technical glitch.
Among the hundreds of harassed fliers affected by the technical glitch in Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport’s navigation system on Thursday evening, was Bollywood star Riteish Deshmukh.
Riteish, who was booked on a Kingfisher Airlines flight from Delhi to Mumbai, was stranded at the airport for two hours. His flight was scheduled to take off from Delhi at around 5.45 pm but finally flew at 8 pm.
After reaching Mumbai, Riteish said, “The problem started as soon as we boarded the plane. For some time there was no information. After a while, the flight guys informed us there will be a delay of 15 minutes because of a technical problem. We had no clue what was happening.”
Riteish said they were informed the flight will take off after 15 minutes.
“They kept on saying this in every briefing and it went on for two hours. We were not given a clear picture about the flight’s actual departure time. But they did say there was a technical problem,” said the actor.
However, he did not blame Kingfisher Airlines for the delay and the inconvenience. “The flight people were very nice. I think the problem was not because of them. It was some other technical issue,” he said.
Riteish said he was very tired though he had managed to catch a few winks on the flight.
“I had come to Delhi from Dhaka this (Thursday) morning where I had gone to watch the final Tri-series cricket match between India and Sri Lanka. Because of fog, the Jet Airways flight in which I was traveling from Dhaka was delayed. I did not get time to rest. There were some personal engagements but as I am tired I will have to cancel them,” he said on phone from Mumbai.
When asked whom did he blame for the ordeal, he said, “I really don’t know. I think the situation was not in their (Kingfisher Airlines) control,” Riteish said.
It was a chaotic day at the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. About 50 flights were cancelled in the morning due to dense fog and in the evening the Air Traffic Control (ATC) system at the airport crashed during peak hours.
Airport sources said at 5:44 pm the automatic air navigation system, which was being upgraded, developed a problem in its display unit. As a result, flight navigation was switched to manual mode.
The snag sent flight operations haywire. About 27 arrivals and 6 departures were affected by over one hour delay. The backlog of flights continued till late night. Several flights hovered for hours in the Delhi airspace.
The failure of the system led to manual handling of flights by the ATC over Delhi and adjoining air space including Srinagar, Lahore, Khajuraho and Lucknow.
“There was some problem with the display system of radar screens. As we switched to manual mode, we were able to clear the flights slowly. By 7:30 the system was restored and normal services started,” an air traffic control spokesperson said.
——–Agencies