Air India flight returns after 3 hours because of Night curfew at FRA

[simplythebest]

https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&rc...67720277,d.c2E

Apparently this happened because the flight was delayed by one hour.

Causes are the night curfew and that the pilots would have extended their time quota.

Is this common?

Shouldn't they have known this before taking off or were the winds so bad...?

[Gabriel]

Definitively, this is not common. A 6 hour flights to nowhere, plus transportation, hotels and meals for everybody, plus customer dissatisfaction. If it was a common event, it would cost the airlines a lot of money in spending and lost revenue.

[EconomyClass]

I have a fuzzy impression that Air India isn't the world's best-run airline.

[MCM]

Its not super common, but its not unheard of. Happens occasionally in Australia with aircraft headed for Sydney, who are notoriously bad at giving dispensations.

Pilots may have initially thought they'd make it, but then enroute traffic meant they had to fly slower and then realised they wouldn't.

Other considerations is that sometimes a company will like a flight to depart and then seek a dispensation to land just after curfew. When they realise they won't get it, flight returns.

No-one likes doing it, it wastes fuel and annoys passengers, but sometimes its best to give it a go.