Mumbai:
Amid reports that its Delhi-bound flight from Lucknow was diverted to Patna without informing passengers, GoAir, on Saturday said that its flight did not make any unscheduled halt in Patna and its passengers were informed at Lucknow Airport itself about the diversion.
The diversion was necessitated as the airline wanted to pick-up Haj passengers from Patna airport, who could not fly in a chartered plane as scheduled earlier, an airline spokesperson said.
"GoAir had filed the amended flight plan, informed the ATC and also the airport authorities and passengers from Lucknow that the flight would be diverted to Patna and from there be taken to Delhi," the spokesperson said.
The passengers of the New Delhi-bound GoAir flight from Lucknow yesterday had complained that the airline diverted the flight to Patna without any intimation.
According to GoAir, it had planned three chartered flights from Patna to Delhi to ferry 450 Haj passengers from Delhi onwards.
"These charters, carried out on directives from the Civil Aviation Ministry to facilitate Haj passengers, were planned in a manner that no scheduled flight would be affected. Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions, the three aircraft could not be dispatched from Delhi to Patna as per schedule," the spokesperson clarified.
While the airline managed to fly two such charter aircraft for the Haj passengers, the third could not take-off from Delhi due to non-availability of regulatory approvals.
"Therefore, we decided to divert the scheduled flight of Delhi-Lucknow-Delhi to Delhi-Lucknow-Patna and then carry the Haj passengers who had to catch the flight scheduled for departure at around 9 am from Delhi," the spokesperson said.