The civil aviation ministry has taken a strong view of the unprecedented delays of Air India?s flights on Saturday. In fact, civil aviation minister Praful Patel has promised strong corrective action against those who were responsible for delays. At least five aircraft, scheduled for midnight, for destinations such as London, New York, Birmingham, Toronto, Dubai, Bangkok and Muscat were delayed by reportedly as much as 32 hours.

Air India has already ordered a probe into the circumstances that caused the delay.

Responsibilities would be fixed on Air India staffers who were on duty during the period when these flights were delayed, an Air India spokesperson said.

At least, three Air India staffers were injured when some irate passengers allegedly became restive and punched them due to the six-hour delay in the Tokyo-bound flight. Air India flights were delayed due to technical snags, leaving several hundred passengers inconvenienced. All the flights finally took off on Sunday afternoon.

?The worst affected were AI-111 Delhi-London-New York flight and AI-841 Delhi-Abu Dhabi-Muscat flight. The New York-bound flight, scheduled to take off at 7:20 am on Saturday, was rescheduled for 12:40 pm on Sunday. Similarly, the flight headed for Muscat was to take off at 12:35 pm on Saturday left around 16 hours later,? the spokesperson added.

Other flights that got delayed by several hours because of the cascading effect were AI-891 to Jeddah, AI-187 to Toronto and AI-348 to Shanghai.

Lack of adequate manpower and infrastructure worsened the problem. ?Only six check-in counters were operational, causing long queues,? the spokesperson said.

?The infrastructure problems will get ironed out in the next couple of years.

Also, Air India will acquire 68 new planes over the next six months,? the spokesperson added.

Probe in Mumbai: Mumbai’s airport authorities are probing the cause of a blackout of runway lights on Sunday evening which resulted in operations coming to a standstill for close to half an hour. The Approach Light System, which includes runway and other light systems on the ground, of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport went out at 7: 21 pm and were restored half an hour later as a result of which the runway was not visible for airborne pilots.