Air Canada’s Toronto flight held up due to bad weather leaves with 400 passengers

An Air Canada flight scheduled to leave for Toronto on Monday evening finally left Delhi 48 hours later on Wednesday with 400 passengers after heavy rain and strong winds forced the incoming flight to divert to Ahmedabad where also the aircraft faced massive turbulence, people aware of the matter said.

Eight people (three passengers and five crew members) suffered minor injuries at Ahmedabad due to what was described as a poor landing and were given first aid, a person familiar with the development said.

An airline official, however, insisted that the flight landed normally and later flew to Delhi.

The flight finally took off at 11.05pm on Wednesday and is expected to land in Toronto on Thursday evening.

Mumbai-based Sanjeev Ahuja, who was travelling from Delhi to Toronto with his wife, said that the airline staff was clueless about the flight status and accommodated them in a hotel in Connaught Place early Tuesday morning. “All our check-in luggage was with the airline as a result of which we had to shop for a few clothes for ourselves in order to survive the two days.”

A passenger from Noida requesting anonymity said, “The airline assured us that we will take off on Tuesday night. All of us were accommodated in four buses to leave for the airport. However, the hotel staff informed us that the flight was cancelled again, and two of the four buses had to return to the hotel.”

“We were on our own and no airline staff escorted us as we remained confused throughout our hotel stay,” he said, adding that flight timings kept changing until the last minute.

“We were troubled as the airline kept revising the flight time and were not sure of taking off until we boarded the flight. The flight had many senior citizens who had travelled from different cities,” a Gurgaon based passenger said.