Air India: Nearly three days after facing a technical glitch in an Air India flight, the airline has cancelled its flight scheduled to fly from San Francisco to Mumbai due to a technical issue in the Boeing 777 aircraft.
While regretting the disruption to its customers, Air India said the affected people have been offered the option of alternative flights or a full refund for the cancelled flight. Besides, the airline will reimburse all expenses that the customers may incur towards hotel accommodation and transportation until they take a flight, an airline spokesperson said in a statement.
Flight AI180 was scheduled to operate from San Francisco to Mumbai on June 8 and was cancelled due to an "unforeseen technical issue". According to the PTI sources, the flight was initially delayed by a few hours due to some issues with an aircraft tyre, and subsequently, the flight was cancelled.
Details about the number of passengers who had booked the flight could not be immediately ascertained.
Air India does not want to take the same headache again!
On June 6, an Air India flight from Delhi to San Francisco carrying 216 passengers and 16 crew on board was diverted to the Magadan port city in far east Russia following a mid-air glitch in one of the Boeing 777-200LR aircraft engines. All were stranded in the port city for two days, and the replacement aircraft ferried them to San Francisco on June 8.
Maintaining that safety was the highest priority throughout, it said that "while the facilities in Magadan, a small city, may not have met the standard we would normally aim to provide, we are grateful for your tolerance and understanding that our local agents and crew did their best under the circumstances." It may be mentioned here that after initially stating that the passengers and crew were accommodated "in hotels locally," Air India later said that the "infrastructure constraints" forced it to lodge them in make-shift accommodations.
Air India in the communication also said that though it dispatched a relief flight at the earliest possible opportunity given the need to obtain insurance and flight plan approvals, clearly, the duration of delay was "long", and the "experience was not what we aspire to offer". "As such, we will fully refund the fare for your journey and, in addition, provide you a voucher for future travel on Air India," the Tata Group airline said.
(With inputs from agencies)
