By Passengers on SpiceJet and Air India Express flights faced lengthy delays today across multiple routes.
A SpiceJet flight from Kochi was delayed by nearly 14 hours, with departure rescheduled to the next day, while a SpiceJet flight from Jaipur faced an almost 12-hour delay.
Air India Express flights from Amritsar and Kochi were delayed by close to 12 hours and over two hours respectively.
An Air India flight departing New Delhi was delayed by roughly 1.5 hours as part of the same disruption.
The delays add to a broader pattern of disruption across Asian aviation hubs on September 11 and 12, when 4,804 flights were delayed and 206 cancelled, with Delhi’s IGI Airport logging 475 delayed departures.
Airlines have not issued a single unified explanation for the string of delays, with individual disruptions attributed to a mix of aircraft rotation issues, weather and downstream scheduling knock-on effects.
Air India Express operates a significant share of India’s Gulf-bound routes, including services to Muscat, Salalah and Kuwait, making its schedule reliability closely watched by frequent flyers on those corridors.
Extended delays of this length typically trigger compensation or rebooking obligations for airlines under India’s civil aviation passenger charter, depending on the specific circumstances of each flight.
The Bengaluru–Vijayawada Air India route has also seen recent delay reports, adding to a pattern of disruption across the carrier’s domestic network this month.
Ground handling and crew scheduling pressures have been cited in some recent Indian aviation disruptions, though airlines have not confirmed this as a specific cause for Saturday’s delays.
Passengers travelling on affected routes were advised to check their flight status directly with airlines given the scale and unpredictability of the ongoing disruptions.
The delays come days after a separate wave of disruption swept Asian aviation hubs on September 11 and 12, when 4,804 flights were delayed and 206 cancelled across the region.
SpiceJet aircraft landing in New Delhi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
