Deccan Chronicle

Airlines cancel 630 flights on Day 1, spark chaos at airports

38 flights cancelled from Hyderabad; travel plans disrupted for thousands

- HARLEEN MINOCHA | DC

Even as the reopening of domestic air services brought some respite for those stranded away from home, the cancellati­on of several flights at the Shamshabad airport on Monday caused chaos and frustratio­n among people. This was part of the nationwide experience on the first day of resumption of flight services after two months of the lockdown.

Even as people from different parts booked flights, some hard-nosed negotiatio­ns that went late into Sunday night between the civil aviation ministry and state government­s ended with Telangana reportedly informing that it was not in a position to receive more than 20 arrivals and cannot permit more than

19 departures a day.

As per the original schedule, at least double this number of flights were to operate every day from Rajiv Gandhi Internatio­nal Airport.

The last-minute change of plans late on Sunday night resulted in several airlines contacting their passengers and informing them of cancelled flights. Every arrival and departing flight gets a slot at an airport and this requires coordinati­on between different agencies and the airlines. The work went on well into the night to rearrange the flight schedules, it was learnt.

According to the RGIA website, seven arriving and 31 departing flights were cancelled on Monday.

A PTI report from Delhi said that nationwide, around 630 flights were cancelled.

Among the many passengers whose travel plans were thrown awry was Anita Dalal, a passenger scheduled to travel from Kolhapur to Mumbai via Hyderabad on Monday. She was stuck in the chaos after her confirmed Indigo flight was cancelled at the last minute.

“I received a message at 1 am on May 25 that my flight scheduled at 2 pm was cancelled due to

Covid-19 travel restrictio­ns. I have been stranded in Kolhapur since the lockdown began two months ago. There have been no other means of transport in Maharashtr­a, so I finally booked a connecting flight to Mumbai via Hyderabad and it got cancelled too,” she said.

She said officials had provided no clarificat­ion yet. “As for the refund, I have been told that money in the form of a credit shall be available for other flight options for a year. Who is going to travel in these conditions now? I don’t want to waste that money. I’d rather get that money back, so I can try to hire a car to travel home now,” she said.

At Hyderabad, flights from Delhi, Bengaluru, Bahrain, and Colombo were cancelled. Thirtyone flights to Delhi, Gwalior, Tirupati, Kolkata, Lucknow,

Mumbai, Kolhapur, Chennai, Visakhapat­nam, Jaipur, and Bengaluru among others were cancelled, according to the RGIA official website.

On Monday, RGIA operated flights from or to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Vidyanagar (Karnataka), Jaipur, Raipur, Kolhapur, Jharsuguda (Odisha); Kochi, Surat, Ranchi, Varanasi, Belgaum, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Pune. The flights connecting these destinatio­ns were to be operated by TruJet, AirAsia India, IndiGo, Alliance Air, SpiceJet, Vistara and Air India.

 ?? — P. SURENDRA ?? Passengers wait for their turn for thermal screening before entering the Rajiv Gandhi Internatio­nal Airport at Shamshabad, Hyderabad, on Monday after domestic flights began operations from the city.
— P. SURENDRA Passengers wait for their turn for thermal screening before entering the Rajiv Gandhi Internatio­nal Airport at Shamshabad, Hyderabad, on Monday after domestic flights began operations from the city.

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