I was on SpiceJet coming back from Chennai last Thursday. The flight took off about 15 minutes late at 8:10 pm. It was scheduled to land in Mumbai around 10 pm. At 9:15 pm, the pilot announced that Mumbai airport had been temporarily closed because an aircraft had burst a tyre on landing. So we would be circling for some time – we were number 5 in the arrival sequence then.
Half hour later, he had bad news for us. We were now between 15 and 20 in the landing sequence, and that meant we would run out of fuel. So, we were going to Ahmedabad for fuel, and we would then come to Mumbai.
We landed in Ahmedabad at 10:45 pm. The “20-minute refueling halt” became a 90-minute fuel, food and crew change halt (since the crew had flown their quota for the day). We finally took past 12:15 am, and landed in Mumbai shortly after 1:15 am, a total of 3+ hours behind schedule.
These are the facts of the case. Tomorrow, we’ll discuss the stupidity of it all.
