High drama was witnessed at the airport in Ahmedabad on Tuesday when nearly 100 passengers of a Delhi-bound Air India flight from Mumbai, diverted here refused to disembark after the pilot declined to fly the plane. The pilot refused to fly the plane citing duty-hour limitation.
The Air India flight, which left Mumbai early Tuesday morning, circled over Delhi airport and when it could not land, was diverted to Ahmedabad, where it reached at around 11 am.
As the passengers were left stranded at the Ahmedabad airport and waited for the weather in Delhi to clear, they refused to get off the plane after the pilot refused to fly the aircraft saying their duty hour is over.
Efforts were made to put the passengers in a hotel here but that did not work  leaving many of them angry.
Alternative crew
An alternative crew was sent to Ahmedabad by a Jet Airways flight which then took the Air India plane to Delhi at 1600 hours.
Asked whether the pilots had refused to fly the plane in Ahmedabad, Air India spokesman Jitendra Bhargava said: “we cannot allow a fatigued pilot to operate a flight.
 Since the duty hours of the crew were over, alternative crew was sent to operate the flight.”
About the inconvenience caused to passengers, he said “we had no alternative but to divert the aircraft for the safety of the passengers. Under the given circumstances, whatever we could do, we did it by sending alternative crew,” he added.
About the delay at Ahmedabad airport, Bhargava said “there was some delay in the positioning of the crew of the flight that was sent from Mumbai because of VIP movements in Ahmedabad”, reference to VIPs who had converged in Ahmedabad airport to attend the swearing in ceremony of Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
Foggy condition
 Meanwhile, foggy conditions in the capital on Tuesday affected flight operations at the airport, inconveniencing a large number of travellers.
As many as 50 flights were delayed anywhere between 30 minutes to three hours, while ten were diverted to other cities, an airport official said.
The airport authorities enforced the Low Visibility Procedure at the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 7:16 am as the Runway Visibility Range reduced to 600 metres.
“About 10 flights departing from Delhi were delayed, six arriving here were also affected and one flight had to be diverted to Varanasi,” a Jet Airways spokesman said.
Forecast
With the weatherman predicting shallow fog in the morning, flights may get affected on Wednesday as well.