Dhaka – Travellers who seethe when their plane is delayed on the tarmac for a few minutes should spare a thought for the 190 people on an Indian budget flight who had to spend the night in the plane parked up at Nagpur airport, without food or water, after an engineering fault on Sunday night, it was reported on Wednesday.
The fault forced the SpiceJet flight to make an unscheduled stop at Nagpur, where the airline had no technical support.
Engineers had to be flown in and meanwhile the airport officials refused to allow those onboard the Mumbai-Kolkata service to disembark.
The passengers’ distress worsened when one of their number developed heart problems, the Times of India reported; officials did let that person off the plane, with an ambulance arriving to take them to hospital.
Passengers and their relatives took to Twitter to vent their frustration at the situation, with one tweeting Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, “Hon’ble Prime Minister, my wife is stuck at Nagpur Airport . 487 unscheduled landing…no water, food, airport help”.
The plane’s fault was finally fixed on Monday morning and the flight was able to leave.
