Aircraft too hot, passengers force pilot to cancel Air India flight to San Francisco at Delhi airport

An Air India plane. File
| Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji

“Help us, we will not fly,” appealed passengers aboard Air India’s Delhi-San Francisco flight on Thursday as the aircraft cabin was baking hot, and forced the pilot to cancel the departure and allow them to disembark the plane at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport.

In videos shot by passengers and shared with The Hindu, many travellers could be seen fanning themselves with handkerchiefs and magazines as they found themselves confined within the aircraft cabin for over 90 minutes.

Others could be seen requesting cabin crew for cold towels and holding cold soft drink cans and applying dew from its surface on young children to comfort them. There were also a large number of senior citizens on the flight and many complained that they were feeling unwell. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued the airline a show-cause notice on Friday for causing discomfort to the affected passengers.

On Thursday, the boarding process for the 3.30 p.m. flight commenced only around 7 p.m. Airport sources said the airline did not have an aircraft for the destination, and a 15-year-old Boeing 777 plane was towed from a parking bay where it had spent the whole day standing in temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius.

As a result, when boarding started, the passengers started to complain of heat and suffocation inside the aircraft, according to 62-year-old Bharat Singh who spoke to The Hindu on Friday. He said four passengers fell unconscious but there was no medical assistance made available to them.

A little later, around 15 to 20 passengers walked to the front end of the aircraft to urge the pilot not to take off and open the doors to allow them to deplane. The flight captain had already announced departure twice, but eventually gave in.

Pilots say that an aircraft of the size of a Boeing 777 needs a lot more cooling than the narrow-body ones, and an external ground-based air conditioning unit or an aerobridge used for cooling an aircraft while it is on the apron is not sufficient, particularly this summer. Airlines can also use the in-built auxiliary power unit for cooling, but many air carriers prefer ground units to save cost and carbon emissions. The Boeing 777 aircraft, which was being used on Thursday, is nearly 15-years-old, and Air India sources said the plane faced “technical issues” impacting cooling.

Though passengers were allowed to get off the plane after spending nearly two hours, their ordeal was far from over. They spent another two hours inside the aerobridge before being allowed inside the terminal building and were shuttled thrice between the airport and hotel before they could take an alternate flight on Friday, which took off over 27 hours later at 6.45 p.m.