Air India passengers stranded in Hyderabad airport for six hours

HYDERABAD: Passengers of an Air India flight were stranded at the airport here for more than six hours after the carrier failed to get landing clearance in Bengaluru due to "bad weather" and thereafter had to deploy new set of pilots.

The flight which came from Muscat was scheduled to depart to Bengaluru at around 3.30 am.

"Because of bad weather in Bengaluru, we did not get clearance", an Air India official said. In the meanwhile, after getting the clearance, the two pilots came under "Duty Time Limitations" which means they cannot fly after certain number of hours on duty.

"So, we had to get another set of pilots", the official said. The flight finally took off at around 10 am.

There were a total of 153 passengers - ten from Muscat and 143 from Hyderabad, it was stated.