HYDERABAD: Over 140 passengers travelling from Bahrain to Chennai through Gulf Air flight were stranded in Hyderabad International Airport as the flight couldn’t land at the destination due to cyclone Mandous.
Even though the flight reached Chennai at around 8.30 pm on Friday, it did not land and the pilot was instructed to go to Hyderabad. The flight arrived at Hyderabad at 9.45 pm. Several flights were delayed in Chennai late Friday night, while early morning flights were cancelled.
Passengers were in the aircraft for almost two hours without any information about their travel. Despite passengers telling the crew that they were hungry, no food/water was served to them by the airline’s operator.
A passenger said that there were many children, pregnant women and senior citizens in the flight. “At around 12 midnight, passengers were taken out to the terminal, where several arguments took place between passengers and management of Gulf Air about the alternatives. Instead of dinner, we were offered breakfast at 5.30 am on Saturday,” the passenger added.
After cancelling the flight, Gulf Air offered to arrange a bus to Chennai which most of the passengers didn’t accept as they had already travelled for more than a day from places like Saudi, UK and US and Bahrain was a transit point.
As passengers were already tired, most of them were not ready to travel for another 14 hours by bus.
A few passengers also tried to buy flight tickets for Indigo at 5.30 am on Saturday in spite of a high fare of Rs 18,000. However, this flight was also cancelled due to bad weather in Chennai.
Later, passengers who couldn’t afford to go by other flights on Saturday boarded the bus, while the remaining booked hotel rooms in Hyderabad and booked another flight at 9.30 pm on Saturday on their own expense.
Passengers lashed out at Gulf Air for their “negligent behaviour” and not being supportive of them. They also demanded a fare refund for the flight booked from Hyderabad-Chennai as the airlines failed to get them to their destination.
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