Passengers suffer as SpiceJet flight makes emergency landing
| Date :12-May-2019 |
Staff Reporter:
Over 150 passengers on-board Bengaluru-New Delhi flight (SG8720) of SpiceJet suffered a great inconvenience for almost eight hours as it made an emergency landing at Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport, Nagpur, in the small hours of Saturday. The flight was scheduled to depart from Bengaluru at 10 pm on Friday. But, it took off from Bengaluru at 11.30 pm. This was just the start of what was ahead for the passengers.
The flight, which was supposed to reach New Delhi by 12.45 am on Saturday, made an emergency landing at Nagpur airport at 1.30 am. This surprised the passengers. As the time passed and the aircraft did not make a move, passengers started making enquiries with the cabin crew. The airline officials asked them to stay put in the aircraft. On repeated enquiries by passengers, SpiceJet officials informed them that Nagpur was not the operating location for the airline and hence there was no ground support available. The airline officials told the passengers that an aircraft would come from Mumbai with engineers. Later on, it was told that aircraft would come from Bengaluru.
However, according to passengers, the engineers did not come. After some time, the officials said that the engineers had refused to come to Nagpur. A passenger Devdutt Sharma tweeted, “Flight was supposed to reach Delhi by 12:45am, landed in Nagpur due to technical issue at 1:45am, nothing resolved still. All passengers still stuck inside flight.” The drama continued till 5.30 am on Saturday, after which the passengers were allowed to deplane and enter the Nagpur airport building. The passengers took to social media and shared photographs of them getting stranded at Nagpur airport and waiting helplessly for alternative arrangement to be made by SpiceJet. Some passengers alleged that they were not even served food during hours-long wait. It was only after they got down from the aircraft that they got refreshments at Nagpur airport. It was around 9.30 am that the stranded passengers were put on an alternate plane of Jet Airways that SpiceJet had acquired.
As per the reports reaching here, a SpiceJet spokesperson later apologised for the inconvenience caused to the passengers. But, the spokesperson stressed that the flight had a ‘normal’ and ‘not an emergency landing’ at Nagpur. The said flight was diverted to Nagpur due to a ‘technical issue’. An alternate aircraft was sent to Nagpur and passengers were flown to New Delhi.