Jalandhar/Amritsar: What started as a routine Wednesday afternoon flight from Adampur to Mumbai turned into a night-long ordeal for dozens of IndiGo passengers, who were shuttled between airports, kept waiting without clear information, and ultimately left with no choice but to return home.
Travellers booked on the 4 p.m. Adampur–Mumbai service said they were informed barely an hour before departure that the flight would not take off from Adampur. Instead, they were instructed to make their way to Amritsar for a rescheduled 10 p.m. departure. Many scrambled to arrange last-minute transport for the roughly 100-km journey.
But the trouble had only begun.
Delays stretch through the night
Passengers who reached Amritsar by evening said they were met with a string of delay notifications that continued well past midnight. The revised departure time of 10 p.m. soon shifted to 11:30 p.m., then 12:50 a.m., then 2:20 a.m., and later 4:30 a.m., 6:30 a.m., and finally 9:30 a.m.
By Thursday morning around 11 a.m.—after nearly 13 hours of overnight waiting—most travellers abandoned hope and headed back to Jalandhar, only to later learn that the airline had pushed the flight again to 4:30 p.m. the same day.
Passengers recount frustration
Amit Jaggi, a Jalandhar-based businessman, said the experience was unlike anything he had encountered in decades of flying.
“I stayed awake the entire night, just waiting and waiting,” he said. “No one from the airline gave us a straight answer. Every time we asked, the staff either avoided us or said nothing. I finally left the airport without knowing whether the flight would ever depart.”
Another passenger, Ashish Bahri, who had also been scheduled to travel to Mumbai for work, said the repeated delays threw all his plans into disarray.
“If there was a technical issue, we should have been informed early. Instead, we spent the entire night on airport chairs, with no clarity. Other airlines were operating flights to Mumbai normally—it was only IndiGo that kept delaying,” he said.
Tense scenes at Amritsar airport
Several passengers described confrontations erupting between fliers and harried airline staff. With no senior IndiGo representative stepping forward to brief the stranded crowd, tension mounted through the night. Airport security and CISF personnel were reportedly called in multiple times to calm situations.
The prolonged disruption has sparked renewed criticism of IndiGo’s handling of delays, especially at smaller airports where passengers say access to timely information is often limited. As of Thursday afternoon, many stranded travellers said they were still waiting for clarity on refunds, rebooking options, or an explanation for the meltdown.
