The miserable chain of technical automated equipment failures seems to be a never-ending agony for passengers. Every day, almost two flights from IGI airport gets delayed due to this and what is alarming is the fact that between 1 January and 30 April, 2014, as many as 239 flights have been delayed due to this.
According to the Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), the operator of IGI airport, there were 63 flights in January and in February as many as 75 flights were delayed due to technical automated equipment failures. In March, there were as many as 59 flights that got delayed and in April, 42 flights met the same fate.
According to recent figures released by DIAL, Air India tops the list of the highest number of flights that were delayed amounting to 108 due to technical automated equipment failures while Singapore Airlines scored second with the delay of 68 flights for the period of January to April 2014.
The sources further said that the figure of delayed flights were high in the months of January and February due to fog as well. The aircrafts faced technical failures.
The technical automated equipment failures can occur due to several reasons like aircraft defects, scheduled maintenance works, late releases, non-scheduled maintenance works, special checks and/or additional works beyond normal maintenance, spares and maintenance equipment, AOG (aircraft on ground for technical reasons) aircraft change for technical reasons, standby aircrafts and also lack of planned standby aircrafts for technical reasons, scheduled cabin configuration and version adjustments.
The data further shows that on January 2014, a total of 8,832 flights departed from IGI, among which 6,038 flights were on time while 2,378 flights were delayed due to some technical reasons related to airlines, airport facilities, weather, air traffic controllers etc.
According to the sources in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the authorities are planning to take steps in this direction.