Air India Delhi-Vancouver flight takes off after 22 hours delay in third incident in a week

Air India faces multiple delays and issues with long-haul flights, prompting regulatory scrutiny and passenger inconvenience.

Air India's Vancouver flight from Delhi of June 1 finally departed at 3.15 a.m. on June 2 after a delay of nearly 22 hours, a source said.

The flight was scheduled to take off at 5.30 a.m. on June 1 but a "technical" issue forced the airline to reschedule it.

"The Delhi-Vancouver flight of Air India, which was to depart on Saturday morning, finally left at around 3.15 a.m. on Sunday," the source said.

"AI 185...was delayed because of technical issues and subsequently due to crew coming under the mandatory Flight Duty Time Limitations," an Air India spokesperson had said in a statement on June 1.

This was at least the third time in the last one week that Air India's ultra-long haul flights had to face inordinate delay for one reason or the other.

Earlier, after a delay of more than 30 hours, the airline's Delhi-San Francisco flight, which was originally scheduled to depart at around 1530 hrs on May 30, took off at 2155 hrs the next day.

However, despite the passengers' plight due to the massive delay, Tata Group-owned Air India did not issue any official statement.