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Business News/ News / India/  Watch: Spicejet passengers left to walk on Delhi airport's tarmac; DGCA starts probe
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Watch: Spicejet passengers left to walk on Delhi airport's tarmac; DGCA starts probe

Several Spicejet passengers had reportedly walked around in the Delhi airport tarmac on Saturday night as the airline was unable to provide a bus for around 45 minutes to take them to the terminal

Spicejet has denied the information and said there was only a ‘brief delay in the arrival of coaches’.Premium
Spicejet has denied the information and said there was only a ‘brief delay in the arrival of coaches’.

Several Spicejet passengers had reportedly walked around in the Delhi airport tarmac on Saturday night as the airline was unable to provide a bus for around 45 minutes to take them to the terminal. The passengers had disembarked from a Hyderabad-Delhi SpiceJet flight.

Following the incident, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has started an investigation into the matter, news agency PTI reported.

A video was posted by a Twitter user of the incident. The Twitter user has written, “How often do you see this happening at T3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi? @flyspicejet kept up cooked up for 45 minutes after announcing “early arrival" of 6 mins at 11:24pm on the SG 8108 Hyd-Delhi. They parked the flight really far away with no buses."

In the video passengers can be seen looking clueless, their cabin baggage in hand looking to find a ride to the terminal.  

See the video here

Further narrating the ordeal, the Twitter user informed that all through, SpiceJet had not communicated with the passengers, nor issued any notification. “All throughout, they announced nothing. No apology. No attempt to calm people. They got one bus but left the rest of the flight behind. Now, at 12:10am, people took matters in their own hands and started walking only to realise the gate is another 1.5km away," she wrote.

Adding several pictorial evidences of the incident, Lasya Nadimpally said that the ordeal did not end with passengers walking around on the tarmac. When they reached the assigned belt there were no bags till the next hour. Much later an official of the airlines informed the by then distraught passengers that the bags were being delivered on a separate belt.

Spicejet has denied the information and said there was only a ‘brief delay in the arrival of coaches’. The airline further informed that once the buses came, all the passengers, including those who had started walking, travelled on them from the tarmac to the terminal building.

“Despite repeated requests from our staff, a few passengers started walking towards the terminal. They had barely walked a few metres when the coaches arrived. All passengers, including those who had started walking, travelled on the coaches to the terminal building.", the airlines said in a statement.

Passengers are not allowed to walk on the Delhi airport's tarmac area as it is a security risk. There is a demarcated path on the tarmac for vehicles only. Therefore, the airlines use buses to take passengers from terminal to aircraft or vice versa using the demarcated path.

SpiceJet's Hyderabad-Delhi flight -- which had 186 passengers on board -- landed at its destination at around 11.24pm on Saturday, people aware of the matter said.

One bus came immediately and took a section of the passengers to the terminal 3, they said.

The rest of the passengers waited for about 45 minutes, and as they didn't see any bus coming for them, they started walking towards the terminal which was about 1.5 km away, they noted.

After these passengers walked for around 11 minutes on tarmac, a bus came at around 12.20pm to take them to the terminal, they said.

When asked about this incident, SpiceJet said in a statement, "The information that passengers of SpiceJet flight Hyderabad-Delhi on 6th August were forced to walk towards the terminal on foot is wrong and is denied.

"There was a brief delay in the arrival of coaches to ferry the passengers from the tarmac to the terminal building."

"Despite repeated requests from our staff, a few passengers started walking towards the terminal. They had barely walked a few metres when the coaches arrived. All passengers, including those who had started walking, travelled on the coaches to the terminal building," the airline mentioned.

SpiceJet has been under the aviation regulator's scanner since it reported around 8 incidents of technical malfunction within a period of 18 days. The airline has been asked to operate at a 50% capacity for eight weeks.

The DGCA's interim order also stated that SpiceJet will be subjected to ‘Enhanced Surveillance' by DGCA during the period of Summer Schedule 2022.

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Published: 07 Aug 2022, 02:29 PM IST
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