Ahmedabad to London: AI passengers stuck for 8 hrs

Nearly 110 passengers on an Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London were stranded for eight hours inside the aircraft at Gatwick Airport after the plane was diverted from nearby Heathrow airport due to fog.

Written by: Press Trust of India

3 min readLondonOct 17, 2011 02:59 AM IST First published on: Oct 17, 2011 at 02:59 AM IST

Nearly 110 passengers on an Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London were stranded for eight hours inside the aircraft at Gatwick Airport on Sunday after the plane was diverted from nearby Heathrow airport due to fog.

Frayed tempers and high drama was witnessed on board the Ahmedabad-Mumbai-London flight AI 131 which was scheduled to land at 7.30 AM local time at Londons Heathrow airport,but the plane could not complete its journey because it was diverted to Gatwick where it reached 30 minutes later.

There were 109 passengers on the plane,which was operated by a crew of 16 on board. Matters came to a head when angry passengers insisted on leaving the aircraft and the Sussex police was called in to maintain peace. The distance from Gatwick to Heathrow is about 75 km.

Irate passengers complained of lack of attention as the aircraft stood on the tarmac,and were upset about why they were not allowed to disembark. Passengers said there was no communication from the crew,and the mood on the plane was becoming heated as they became angry.

A spokesman for Gatwick airport said the airline was waiting for a replacement crew before the flight could complete its journey. The Sussex Police were called to the flight to prevent a breach of peace. The flight finally took off from Gatwick at around 4.30 PM and landed at Heathrow.

An Air India spokesperson in Delhi said that after the flight landed at Gatwick,the Flight Duty Time LimitationFDTL of the crew,which took the flight to London from India,came into force and a new crew was required to take the flight back to Heathrow. The return flight from London to Mumbai AI 130 has been delayed by about 10 hours.

The spokesperson said that during the flights stay at Gatwick,passengers were asked to stay inside the aircraft as the flight was supposed to get clearance to fly any moment when the weather at Heathrow cleared. He said the AI plane was among five flights diverted to Gatwick airport due to bad weather and poor visibility.

A passenger,Pravin Salunke,DIGCBI said friends and relatives of the travellers on the plane informed the stranded passengers that all flights were landing in Heathrow except for the AI flight. Salunke said the passengers were told by the pilot that the plane was being diverted because of fog and weather conditions in Heathrow and that a new crew was awaited.

Another passenger said the pilot told the travellers that the aircraft cannot land because of the fog. While Air India cited FDTL issues,European Union regulations requires that a new crew would have to take the aircraft from Gatwick to Heathrow.