Footage shows passenger Sahil Kataria run towards the co-pilot on the IndiGo flight from Delhi to Goa.

The furious passenger slapped and pushed Anup Kumar after the flight was delayed due to 13 hours due to fog yesterday as fellow passengers gasped in shock.

Kataria said to the co-pilot: ‘If you want to fly, then fly the plane. Otherwise open the door,’ before he was led away by another passenger.

In a second clip, Kataria is seen being escorted off the plane after reportedly apologising to the co-pilot.

Kumar, who was addressing passengers via the intercom system when he was attacked, has filed an official complaint against Kataria and IndiGo followed suit.

The co-pilot was part of the staff that had replaced the previous crew, since Flight Duty Time Limitations regulations kicked in and prevented the old crew from working the flight after the delay.

The regulations include adequate rest periods to mitigate fatigue-related safety concerns, NDTV reports.

Footage of the moment Kataria lurches at the co-pilot has gone viral on social media, with many condemning his actions.

‘What does the pilot or cabin crew have to do with the delay? They were just doing their job.

‘Arrest this man, and put him on the no-fly list. Publish his picture so people are aware of his bad temper in public,’ wrote one user on X, formerly known as Twitter.

‘This person should be booked for assault as well as put on a No Fly List. While IndiGo is in the news for all the wrong reasons and must be taken to task for its shortcomings, but this is totally unacceptable passenger behaviour,’ another added.

The severe delays for many flights yesterday were due to bad weather conditions, including heavy fog over northern India.

According to aviation website Flightradar24, at least 313 flights leaving Delhi were delayed and 82 flights were cancelled on Monday.

Some flights were delayed for more than eight hours, like the IndiGo flight, whose frustrated passengers faced a 13-hour delay.

Many airlines have already warned that the bad weather conditions could disrupt more flights in Delhi.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport was not operational from 4am to 10am on Sunday (10.30pm UK time Saturday to 5.30am UK time Sunday) because of dense fog, the official said, leading to massive delays at airports across the country.

India’s federal aviation minister said the use of an additional runway was being expedited, equipped with the CAT III navigation system, which enables aircraft to land even when visibility is low.

‘Incidences of unruly behaviour amidst this are unacceptable, and will be dealt with strongly in line with the existing legal provisions,’ Jyotidaditya Scindia, the minister of civil aviation in India, said in a post on X.

The country’s weather office has predicted dense fog and a cold wave in New Delhi for Monday and ‘very dense fog’ on Tuesday, with a minimum temperature of 4 degrees Celsius.

Read the originally published story on dailymail.co.uk

The post Moment air passenger stuck in 13-hour delay finally flips and SLAPS co-pilot sparking chaos on board appeared first on Aviation Figures.

American Airlines, the country’s largest carrier, expects Friday, December 22, to be its busiest of a 19-day-long holiday travel period that begins Wednesday, December 20. In all, the airline plans to serve 12.7 million passengers.

“The 2023 holiday period is longer than previous years, reflecting the changing travel habits of our customers and school schedules in many of American’s hub markets,” the airline said.

The Federal Aviation Administration says holiday air traffic overall will peak on the Thursday before Christmas with the agency’s air traffic controllers handling 48,959 flights.

In a sign of how spread out winter holiday travel has become, Delta Air Lines spokesperson Morgan Durant told CNN that there is a “seven-way tie” for that carrier’s busiest days.

Delta is expecting to serve around 9 million people in total, including 600,000 customers each day on December 21 and 22 as well as from December 26 to 30.

Industry lobby group Airlines for America says that 2.8 million passengers will fly each day overall during the holiday rush, representing a 16% increase in the number of holiday fliers over 2022.

Airlines hire ahead of the holiday wave

“U.S. airlines have been working for months to accommodate unprecedented demand throughout the holiday season,” the group said in a statement, underscoring that airlines have been “hiring aggressively” and have adjusted flight schedules to match the shortage of air traffic controllers.

That appeared to pay off over Thanksgiving when very few flights were canceled, though the airlines also benefited from favorable weather.

Read full originally published story on cnn.com

The post US airlines prepare to fly 2.8 million passengers a day over the long Christmas holiday appeared first on Aviation Figures.