An aerobridge is a movable connector which commonly extends from an airport terminal gate to an airplane in order to help passengers board the flight.
Over 100 passengers of an IndiGo flight from Lucknow to Hyderabad were forced to spend the entire night on the aerobridge at Lucknow airport after their Airbus A320neo aircraft developed a technical snag. The airline could not provide an alterntaive aircraft to fly their passengers to their destination at night. As a result, passengers waited to board their flight on the aerobridge itself.
An aerobridge is a movable connector which commonly extends from an airport terminal gate to an airplane in order to help passengers board the flight.
IndiGo’s flight 6E 278 was scheduled to take off at 9.15 pm but, on Thursday, it was delayed by over eight hours. And while it’s scheduled time of landing at Hyderabad was 11:15 pm on Thursday itself, it finally landed at 8:19 am this morning.
One of the passengers on board the flight said the stranded passengers included people of age groups and some who were wheelchair bound as well.
According to flightradar24, a Swedish flight tracking service that provides real time information about aircrafts across the world, the flight finally departed Lucknow at 6am and landed Hyderabad at 8.19 am.
Officials from IndiGo airline are yet to comment on this issue.
Neo aircraft fitted with unmodified Pratt & Whitney (P&W) engines have been giving trouble for some time now and have been asked by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to replace the engines with modified low pressure turbine (LPT) engines.
The DGCA has given certain deadlines to both IndiGo and GoAir, both who currently to use P&W engines. While GoAir has replaced all its 13 unmodified P&W engines, IndiGo- that has more than 90 of such aircraft have been given a deadline of January 31, 2020 to complete the replacement process.
Prasanta Patnaik