BENGALURU: Flights arriving from southern states at the Kempegowda International Airport as well as many departing flights were delayed this morning due to a technical glitch that took place at Chennai.
According to an airport source, the delays were not because of problems at Bengaluru. "Chennai is the central Flight Information Region (FIR) for airports in South India and a technical issue there has affected airports across all of south," said a senior official of an airline. "As a consequence, flights were delayed. The problem has been rectified by 11 am and normalcy has been restored but as a cascading effect minor delays will continue to happen for some time," he added.
Among the flights that suffered delays ranging between 20 minutes to 40 minutes were those of Indigo flights arriving from Hyderabad (6E 413), Mangaluru (6E 6178) and Kozhikode (6E 7128) while flight no. 6E 509 from Bengaluru to Nagpur took off only at 7.50 am instead of the scheduled departure time of 6.05 am.
According to a state government source, the Air Traffic Control at Kempegowda International Airport did not receive signals for 90 minutes. "As a result, punctuality of flights at Bangalore airport were affected in the morning."
To a tweet from a passenger Jayanth Rao on the huge delays suffered by Indigo 6E 409 earlier in the day, Indigo airline responded thus: "The flight is delayed as we're waiting for clearance from Air Traffic team and such factors are uncontrollable. We'll get you in the air soon."