Air India Jakarta-Delhi Flight Makes Emergency Landing In Varanasi Due To Delhi Storm, Passengers Held Onboard For Hours

An Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner (Flight AI-386) carrying 187 passengers, including three infants, made an unscheduled landing at Varanasi's Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport on Tuesday evening.

The Jakarta-Delhi flight was diverted after multiple holding patterns over Delhi exhausted fuel reserves amid severe weather-induced low visibility.  
Flight made an emergency landing at 4:20 PM IST at Varanasi, and was made to wait 2 hours 40 minutes for weather conditions to return to normal and refueling before Delhi departure, passengers retained onboard during refueling.  

Airport director Ankit Kumar confirmed: "Standard operating procedures were strictly followed. The aircraft departed for Delhi at 7 PM after weather normalization." Meteorological data indicated sudden thunderstorm activity over Delhi's IGI Airport during the incident.