Air India's Delhi-Vancouver flight faces delay, rescheduled for Sunday

Air India's flight from the national capital to Vancouver, which was to take off early Saturday morning, faced an inordinate delay due to technical issues.

The airline said the flight has been rescheduled and is now expected to depart early morning on Sunday.

In a span of three days, this is the second instance of an Air India ultra long haul flight getting delayed for long hours. After a delay of more than 30 hours, the airline's Delhi-San Francisco flight, that was originally scheduled to depart at around 1530 hours on Thursday, took off at 2155 hours on Friday.

"AI185 scheduled to operate Delhi-Vancouver of 1 June was delayed because of technical issues and subsequently due to crew coming under the mandatory Flight Duty Time Limitations," an Air India spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday.

The spokesperson said the flight is expected to leave early morning on June 2 and regretted the inconvenience caused to passengers due to the operational disruption.
 

The flight was originally scheduled to depart at around 0530 hours on Saturday.

Details about the number of passengers could not be immediately ascertained.

"Guests were offered hotel accommodation and the options of cancellation with full refunds and complimentary rescheduling to another date," the spokesperson said.

On Friday, aviation regulator DGCA issued a show cause notice to Air India for some flight delays and failure to take due care of the passengers.

The inordinate delay of two international flights -- AI 183 from Delhi to San Francisco on May 30 and AI 179 from Mumbai to San Francisco on May 24 were mentioned in the show cause notice.