Representational file photo of an Air India flight.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
Air India will operate a ferry flight on June 7 from Mumbai to take 216 passengers stranded in Russia onward to San Francisco and is liaising round the clock with Indian and Russian authorities after another flight yesterday was diverted following a technical glitch.
“A ferry flight is scheduled to operate to GDX from Mumbai, India (BOM) at 1300 Hours IST on 07 June 2023, subject to necessary regulatory clearances, which would take passengers and crew of AI173 onward to San Francisco,” an Air India spokesperson said in a statement.
On June 6, Air India’s AI 173 from Delhi to San Francisco was forced to divert to Magadan in Russia after one of its engines developed a technical glitch. There were a total of 216 passengers and 16 crew members onboard.
The airline said that all passengers were moved to makeshift accommodations due to infrastructural limitations around the remote airport.
“Given the infrastructural limitations around the remote airport, we can confirm that all passengers were eventually moved to a makeshift accommodation, after making sincere attempts to accommodate passengers in hotels locally with the help of local government authorities,” the statement said.
It added that this was the best possible ground support that it could arrange as the airline doesn’t have any airline staff in the remote town of Magadan and that it was engaged in a round-the-clock liaison with the Consulate General of India in Vladivostok, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, local ground handlers, and the Russian authorities.