Patna: Around 65 passengers of flybig airline, who had booked their tickets for Guwahati on Sunday evening on via S9229, had to cancel their trip as the fight did not arrive Patna’s Jayaprakash Narayan International Airport from Kolkata.
It is said that the flight, which arrived late at Kolkata, did not take off for Patna airport as the watch tower was shut down. The flight was slated to arrive at Patna at around 10pm against the usual schedule of 7.05pm. The airline officials said that the flight was delayed for around three hours owing to some operational issues.
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Chaos and commotion cropped up after the airline announced sudden cancellation of the flight at night. All passengers had got their boarding passes from the counter to go for Guwahati, despite the flight running late. They created ruckus at the airport and were demanding for arrangement of another flight to take them to the destination.
Many of them were going with their families. The passengers were demanding another flight. Flybig operates daily flight operates on Guwahati-Kolkata-Patna-Guwahati sector. According to official sources, the aircraft was delayed due to operational reasons.
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“The flight was scheduled to land at 10 and take off for onward journey at 10.30 pm. However, it was not allowed to land here after scheduled closure of watch tower of the airport at around 10pm. For this reason ATC did not give permission to land. Therefore did not take off from Kolkata. The flight was later cancelled,” said an airline official
Due to the cancellation of the flight, 60 passengers coming from Kolkata to Patna were stranded there. After the uproar, the CISF jawan somehow pacified the passengers by persuading them. Many tickets were booked for Monday. According to sources, all will be sent to Guwahati on Monday. Airlines are busy making arrangements for the stay of the people. Here, passengers queued up at the airlines counter to return their tickets.
The local official of the Airport Authority of India (AAI), who run and manage the airport operation, could not be reached out for their comments.
