About 170 passengers of Air India's Delhi-Kochi-Dubai flight, scheduled to depart at 5.10 am, were held up at the IGI airport here...

About 170 passengers of Air India's Delhi-Kochi-Dubai flight, scheduled to depart at 5.10 am, were held up at the IGI airport here for almost six hours, with the airline saying that it was due to technical reasons.  However, the airline sources claimed that the delay was because of non-availability of the crew. "AI 933 Delhi-Kochi-Dubai is held up at Delhi due to technical reasons. Revised ETD is 1100 hrs. We sincerely apologize for the delay and inconvenience caused to our esteemed passengers," Air India said in a tweet.

IGI Airport

Sources said the crew issue was resolved and the flight took off at 11 am. Passengers of Air India's Delhi-Tokyo flight, scheduled to leave last night, were also remained stranded for almost seven hours due to a problem with the air conditioning system, sources said. The Flight AI 306 with 171 passengers on board was supposed to depart from the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 9.15 pm yesterday, but it took off at 4 am after the problem was fixed, they said. Passengers of both the flight took to Twitter to vent their anger.