DNA TV Show: Why airlines do not allow passengers to deplane during tarmac delays

There have been many complaints about Indigo Airlines taking off late by several hours, not reaching the scheduled destination but landing in some other city and keeping passengers stranded on the aerobridge of the airport. It seems as if airline companies deliberately keep passengers sitting in the plane for many hours. Due to this, the anger of the passengers on the flight from Delhi to Goa on Sunday also erupted. IndiGo airline neither allowed the passengers to leave the plane nor did they take off. Now, it is also important to understand why this happened.

There are also some technical reasons why airlines do this. Before understanding this, you have to understand what procedure a passenger follows before flying in an aircraft.

- Firstly, the passenger takes the air ticket, then takes the boarding pass at the airport or online.

- After this, the passenger hands over his luggage at the counter of his airline company at the airport.

- After that, the passenger goes to the gate of the airport where his plane is parked.

- After showing the boarding pass again at this gate, one has to go through the Aerobridge before boarding the plane. One part of the aerobridge opens towards the airport gate, and the other part opens towards the airplane entry gate.

- After boarding the passengers, the aircraft gates are closed. After that, the aircraft waits for its 'Sequence Number' or its turn in the take-off line.

- While waiting for your turn, it is important that all the passengers are seated in the plane, all the crew is present in the plane for their duty and the doors of the plane are closed. This situation is called 'being ready for push back' in the technical language of the aviation industry.

- In case of dense fog also, the same procedure is followed, and the passengers are kept seated in the aircraft. Airlines do this so that as soon as the fog clears, they are ready to take off on their sequence number. Even if this delay is of several hours, airline companies keep the doors of their aircraft closed.

To disembark passengers from an aircraft, airlines have to follow many different rules. For this, permission has to be taken from Airport Security. If the passengers are disembarked, then in such a situation all the passengers have to go through the Security Check and Boarding process again. Apart from this, the aircraft of the airline company has to take parking space again at the airport. This process takes a lot of time and a lot of money for the airline company. That's why airline companies avoid doing this and keep the passengers seated in the aircraft only.

People complain that if the airline company knows that there will be a delay of several hours due to bad weather, then why does it not inform the passengers in advance and allow them to go to the airport? They do not do this because if the passengers get information about a long delay, they can get their tickets cancelled. To avoid ticket cancellations, airline companies do not provide complete information to passengers regarding flight delays.