Times of India--Continental Flight

Newark flight finally leaves after two days

May 22, 2011, 11.21pm IST

New Delhi: Passengers of a Continental Airlines flight to Newark spent over 44 hours in the city after their flight got delayed due to a technical snag. The delayed flight CO83 was scheduled to depart from Delhi's IGI Airport at 10.50pm on Friday but finally departed around 6 on Sunday evening.

Dr Yog Raj Sharma, a passenger on the flight, said he and his family had been made to board and sat in the aircraft for about three hours before airline officials told them that the flight had been rescheduled for the next day. "The crew kept telling us that we would take off shortly but when even the air-conditioning stopped working, we were told that we would be shifted to a hotel as there was a technical problem with the aircraft. At 4am, we were shifted to a hotel in Vasant Kunj," said Sharma.

Ashish Pradhan, who had come to India with his wife for his sister's wedding and was scheduled to join work on Monday, said there was complete mismanagement on the airline's part as it kept lying to them about the flight's departure.

------------------------------I finally made it home Monday morning, no thanks to the staff from Continental in New Delhi.  They scheduled me to come home on Monday night.  When we arrived in Newark, the staff there at least had empathy for what had happened to us, and were wondering why we were not placed on flight 083 that had many open seats while we were in India.  That would have meant that they would have had to use some logic in New Delhi, but that is not the case.  We were left in unsafe conditions, while at the Delhi airport, and no one seemed to care.  Children were sleeping on the floor and no one even offered us water or food after 12 hours of being in the airport.  The staff refused to keep of abreast of what was happening.  The only thing they would announce was that we will be boarding in 10 minutes, and that never came to fruition.   Just trying to get on the buses that were transporting us to the hotel for the night left us in great danger.  People were scattered all over with no lines, and buses were coming and going at a good rate of speed, and the Continental staff was just standing there, doing nothing.  Someone will  get hit by a bus or have a heart attack, because they are unable to get their luggage and Continental/United will be sued.  We were told that they didn't want to get our luggage off of the plane because it was raining.  By the second day, passengers were outraged and said that they would not leave the airport until we received our luggage.  I will be in touch with Continental to see how they plan on compensating those of us who were stuck in Delhi due to a lot of negligence on their behalf.