Calcutta news

KOLKATA: Passengers booked on the Saturday morning Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt were stranded at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport for several hours when the aircraft developed snags. The flight, that was to take off at 2.45 am on Saturday, was rescheduled 21 hours later at 11.40 pm.

The inordinate delay led to protests at the airport on Saturday morning. With many booked on connecting flights from Frankfurt to north America and rest of Europe, the delay jeopardised travel plans.

The passengers were also irked that they had been made to board the aircraft and then kept confined for two hours before being allowed to disembark. Incidentally, dinner was served on board the stationary aircraft.

"Why did they keep us waiting at the airport all night and not have us transferred to hotels immediately after the snag in the plane was detected," said city-based businessman Jhalak Das Roy, travelling to Phoenix via Frankfurt and Chicago.

Technicians noticed the hydraulic leak in the landing gear after the Frankfurt-Kolkata flight touched down around 11.40 pm on Friday. "At the time, engineers thought the repairs would take a couple of hours. However, it turned out to be more time-consuming than was estimated," an airline official said.

At 7 am passengers were told that repairs would take several more hours and the flight would take off only late in the night. This led to uproar from a section of passengers.

The matter was, however, resolved and the 192 passengers were sent to five city hotels for the day.