Pune: Many flyers of an early morning Delhi-bound SpiceJet flight SG-937 on Thursday boarded the plane and dozed off. When some of them woke up after an hour-and-a-half hoping that the aircraft must be descending for the destination, they were disappointed to find themselves still on the Pune airport tarmac.“The flight (SG-937) was scheduled to take off at 5.55am and land in Delhi at around 8.30am. We boarded the plane by 6.15am and many of us dozed off because it was an early flight. The pilot, however, announced that the flight would take another 10 minutes to take off due to a technical glitch. I woke up after an hour or so to find that the flight had still not taken off,” Pramodkumar Sonami, a Pune resident and one of the flyers, told TOI.“No one even told us to disembark before 8.30am, the time when the flight was supposed to land in Delhi. The cabin crew asked us to disembark over two hours after we waited onboard the plane,” Somani said.The flight was eventually delayed by around seven hours, defeating the flyers’ purpose of taking an early flight.An airline spokesperson told TOI that a technical issue delayed the flight. “SpiceJet flight SG 937, scheduled to operate from Pune to Delhi, was delayed due to a last-minute technical issue and further impacted by a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) at Pune. As the rectification took longer than initially anticipated, all passengers were deplaned. The flight subsequently departed and landed in Delhi. The inconvenience caused to passengers is regretted.“After disembarking, a flyer said, there was utter confusion and chaos at the Pune terminal. “The airline staff hinted that the flight could be cancelled. Flyers were furious. We were taken to the arrival area. A lot of arguments ensued. No one from the airline offered a bottle of water to us, let alone food. After all this, they finally said the flight would take off around 11.30am,” Somani said.The passengers had to complete the check-in and security check process again. “We finally boarded the plane again around 12.30pm and it took off by 12.45pm. We landed in Delhi around 2.30pm,” Somani told TOI.
