TIRUCHY: The Tiruchy international airport has recently been witnessing instances of flights being grounded after developing snags and in a fifth such incident within two months, an Air Asia flight was on Tuesday grounded after developing a glitch.
The Kuala Lumpur-bound Air Asia flight was grounded after developing a technical snag, forcing 137 passengers to wait for nearly 10 hours from Monday night to Tuesday morning at the airport.
According to an Air Asia official at the airport, a technical expert team found that there was a burst in a fuel tube in the plane, while they was engaged in routine checking of the flight which arrived here from Kuala Lumpur at 11.25 pm on Monday. It was scheduled to depart at 11.55 pm on the same day.
Following this, all the passengers were accommodated in a hotel in the city and travelled by Air Asia’s morning flight which arrived here at 8.55 am on Tuesday.
However, passengers who had booked in the morning flight requested that they be accommodated in the flight at 5.05 pm. Officials said they expected the grounded flight to be ready around 8 pm after the snag is rectified and the passengers who were to depart by the evening flight would be flown out in the plane.
It may be noted that on August 21 and September 29, Air India Express flights were grounded due to technical problems, while Tiger Airways, Sri Lankan Airlines and Air Asia flights had to be grounded on August 4, September 22 and September 30 respectively.
Each time the passengers, who were made to stay in a hotel near the airport, expressed displeasure claiming that they were not treated properly. Some of them were not provided food, they lamented. However, in the case of Air Asia, they didn’t face any such problem, one of the passengers said.