Flyers irked as airline tries to cool them

CHENNAI: Kochi-bound passengers who were rubbing sleep out of their eyes to board a 5.55-am flight from Chennai were rudely shaken awake when their flight was delayed. The reason? The plane’s air conditioning unit had apparently conked, said a few disgruntled passengers. Not willing to be named, the passengers who had cleared security and were about to get on Spicejet’s SG-3241 flight, said the crew told them at the last moment that there would be an undeterminable delay.After a good couple of hours in the waiting lounge, they were notified that the glitch in the air conditioning unit had been rectified and that the flight would depart at 8.20 am. One of the passengers, said quite a few of them were elderly, while a couple looked decidedly sick. “They didn’t even offer us water,” he charged.Finally, the flight departed and landed at Kochi a little after 9 am. This delay, though, caused the return Kochi-Chennai run of the same plane to be delayed by an hour. When contacted, a Spicejet official said that there had indeed been a minor problem.