An Air India flight from Kolkata to Delhi was diverted to Lucknow on Thursday afternoon because of bad weather in the national capital.
The flight, with 136 passengers, was among the nine Air India flights from different parts of the country which were diverted to Lucknow and Jaipur after being unable to land in Delhi, a spokesperson for the airline said.
PTI reported 22 flights were diverted from the Delhi airport to Lucknow, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Dehradun on Thursday evening.
“The flight had taken off from Kolkata at 3.25pm. It kept hovering over the Delhi airport for some time. Then the pilot announced that because the aircraft was low on fuel, it was being diverted to Lucknow,” said one of the passengers on the flight.
“We landed at the Lucknow airport around 6.45pm and have been stuck since. All passengers are sitting inside the aircraft. We requested the flight attendants to spray disinfectant because there were flies but they did nothing,” he said.
The aircraft finally took off from Lucknow around 9.45pm, said the passenger.
“There was a severe thunderstorm in Delhi for which nine Air India flights bound for Delhi could not land. They had to be diverted to Lucknow and Jaipur,” said a spokesperson for Air India.
“All the aircraft had holding fuel for 30 to 40 minutes but still they had to be diverted because it could have taken longer to land.”
According to the spokesperson, after the weather improved late in the evening, the diverted flights started taking off for Delhi again one after another.