Mumbai: Over 50 Indian passengers flying Air France had a "harrowing" time at Paris airport after their aircraft developed a technical problem and complained on reaching here that they were victims of "racial" profiling.
The passengers, who spent 28 hours in Paris, said they were confined to a lounge at the airport there from 10 pm on Saturday till 7 am the next morning and given "hardly any food and water".
The passengers, on their way to Mumbai from the US via Paris, said while the foreigners were taken to hotels shortly after their plane returned to the Paris airport due to apparent technical problem following a four-hour flight, they were taken to the lounge and given just a bottle of water and a sandwich.
Giving details of their "harrowing" time after landing late on Monday night, one of the travellers, Vineeta Sengupta said, "No foreigner would have been treated like the way we were treated. People were lying down on the floor over there (at a place at the airport) where immigration takes place".
Accusing Air France of "racial" profiling, a girl passenger said that the officials there even had threatened that they would be handed over to the police if they did not stop protesting.
Sengupta said the 53 to 54 Indian passengers were later "huddled out" of the airport on a "group visa", which the authorities could have provided "much earlier", and taken to a hotel.
No reason has officially been given for the delay.
The passengers, who were in transit and did not have a visa for Paris, said the flight--AF 218--took off from the French capital with 169 passengers and 12 crew on board but returned to the airport after just about four hours in flight.
"The sandwich was so bad that one could not eat it," complained one of the travellers. "We had to beg for water. There was no information, no facility to even ring up".
Sengupta said the pilot had initially aborted take off at Paris airport due to some "switch" trouble. After a two-hour wait, the plane took off but after four hours of flying, the captain announced that the aircraft was returning to Paris due to operational reasons, she said.
After going back to the airport, the officials claimed that the police was not giving visa although the other foreigners left for the hotels within half-an-hour of reaching there, the passengers said.
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