Indian Airline’s infamous hydraulic failures and Mumbai airport’s infrastructure crunch could well have possibly claimed their highest profile victim so far — superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Thanks to a mix of these factors, Bachchan — who wasn’t even flying IA (now Air India) — reached Mumbai from Delhi in five hours, on a flight that should not take more than an hour and 45 minutes.

The reason: the national carrier’s plane got stuck on Mumbai’s sole functional runway in the early hours of Wednesday following which there was no place to land and incoming aircraft running out of fuel while hovering had to be diverted to Ahmedabad.

The root of the problem, for Bachchan and other passengers who took off in Jet Airways’ 9W 2306 from Delhi around 10.30 pm, had its origin far away over the Indian Ocean.

“The pilot of an Indian Airlines flight from Chennai to Dubai with 121 passengers on board suspected a hydraulic failure. The plane was diverted to make an emergency landing in Mumbai. A full emergency was declared at the airport and the plane landed 21 minutes past midnight,” said a Mumbai airport spokesperson.

After landing safely, the plane stopped on the runway and had to be then towed away. However, this process took some time during which the airport had no operational runway.

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