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Air travel woes continued unabated in India as an Air India flight from Mumbai to London was delayed by nearly seven hours on Saturday, a day after a major technical glitch paralyzed operations at the Delhi airport.Air India flight AI129 that was scheduled to depart from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) at 6:30 am IST to London Heathrow was grounded due to technical problems in the aircraft. The airline confirmed the delay and provided an updated time of departure.Air India issued a statement saying, Due to technical difficulties, the flight will now take off at 1 pm. Passengers have been provided with refreshments. Flight tracking data, however, indicated that the estimated time of take-off was closer to 2:00 pm.Echoes Of Delhis ATC FailureThe incident happens right after the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi witnessed massive disruption on Friday, as incidents of infrastructure and operational challenges persist in Indias aviation.Delhi Glitch: Delhi’s IGI airport saw more than 800 flights being delayed while at least 20 were cancelled on Friday after the failure of the Automatic Message Switching System or AMSS. This system is crucial as it automatically transmits the flight plan data to air traffic controllers screens.Manual Mayhem: The collapse of the AMSS meant that more than 1,500 daily flight movements were being manually processed by ATC, an extremely slow process. The average delays were about 50 minutes and hundreds of frustrated passengers waited up to 12 hours.AAI, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation, sorted the problem out late on Friday evening but was slammed by the passengers who questioned how far Indias busiest international airport was operationally resilient after a spate of recent malfunctions.While the Mumbai delay of Air India was due to a specific aircraft technical problem and not the national ATC system which failed in Delhi, these back-to-back incidents in Indias two busiest airports point towards an emerging trend of operational disruptions for travelers.ALSO READ | Is Your City On The List? CPCB Data Reveals North Indias 10 Worst Pollution Hotspots
