Flight disruption continued today, with several services delayed by as much as 14 hours.

A SpiceJet flight from Kochi faced the longest wait, with its departure pushed to the next day, while a SpiceJet flight from Jaipur was delayed by nearly 12 hours.

Air India Express flights from Amritsar and Kochi were delayed by close to 12 hours and over two hours respectively.

An Air India flight from New Delhi saw a delay of around 1.5 hours.

The disruption follows a wider wave of delays across Asian airports on September 11 and 12, which saw 4,804 flights delayed and 206 cancelled, including 475 delayed departures at Delhi’s IGI Airport.

Air India Express operates a significant share of India’s Gulf-bound routes, including services to Muscat, Salalah and Kuwait, making its schedule reliability closely watched by frequent flyers on those corridors.

Extended delays of this length typically trigger compensation or rebooking obligations for airlines under India’s civil aviation passenger charter, depending on the specific circumstances of each flight.

The Bengaluru–Vijayawada Air India route has also seen recent delay reports, adding to a pattern of disruption across the carrier’s domestic network this month.

Ground handling and crew scheduling pressures have been cited in some recent Indian aviation disruptions, though airlines have not confirmed this as a specific cause for Saturday’s delays.

Passengers travelling on affected routes were advised to check their flight status directly with airlines given the scale and unpredictability of the ongoing disruptions.

The delays come days after a separate wave of disruption swept Asian aviation hubs on September 11 and 12, when 4,804 flights were delayed and 206 cancelled across the region.

Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport was among the worst-hit in that broader regional disruption, logging 475 delayed departures over the two-day period.

Passengers on the affected Amritsar and Jaipur flights faced waits of nearly 12 hours before departure, with some SpiceJet passengers from Kochi seeing their flight pushed to the following day.

SpiceJet aircraft landing in New Delhi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Adani Airport Holdings has raised $1 billion in primary equity funding, bringing in Temasek and BlackRock-managed funds among its new investors.

The investor consortium, which also includes Alpha Wave Global and Premji Invest, will collectively own about 5.54 percent of the company.

The deal values Adani’s airport business at roughly $18 billion on a pre-money basis.

Funds raised will go toward modernising airport infrastructure, building Adani Airport City ecosystems, and expanding passenger and cargo-related businesses.

AAHL operates eight airports in India, including Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, accounting for about 25 percent of the country’s passenger traffic.

The capital infusion is expected to support development of integrated ‘Adani Airport City’ ecosystems, combining aeronautical and non-aeronautical commercial infrastructure around its airport sites.

Alpha Wave Global, Premji Invest, Temasek and BlackRock-managed funds are among the world’s largest institutional and sovereign-linked investors, giving the deal significant credibility in global infrastructure markets.

The deal comes as India debates whether to cap the number of airports a single private operator can control, a policy question that has drawn scrutiny of Adani’s expanding airport portfolio.

Part of the funding is earmarked for expanding capacity to handle nearly 200 million passengers annually across the group’s airport network.

This transaction ranks among the largest primary equity investments by financial institutions into India’s airport infrastructure sector to date.

Adani Airport Holdings Limited manages eight airports across India, including Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, and accounts for about 25 percent of India’s passenger traffic.

AAHL also handles roughly 33 percent of India’s air cargo volumes, making it the largest private airport operator in the country by traffic share.

The new investors will subscribe to shares in three tranches, with the final tranche expected to complete by July 2027.

The $18 billion pre-money valuation places Adani Airports among the most highly valued airport infrastructure businesses in Asia.

Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Air India was caught up in UK air traffic chaos on Tuesday after a technical failure at NATS disrupted flight operations across the country.

The outage triggered more than 1,000 flight cancellations in the UK on Tuesday, with 177 more flights cancelled for Wednesday.

Heathrow, a key hub for India-UK travel, was among the hardest-hit airports, alongside Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol.

Air India confirmed the technical problem forced it to divert, delay or cancel multiple flights scheduled to and from UK airports.

NATS said its systems were operating normally again, but warned that recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time.

Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol airports all reported disrupted flight operations during the outage, with Heathrow the most severely affected.

NATS said recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time even after the underlying technical issue was resolved.

This is not the first time a NATS technical failure has caused mass disruption to UK air travel, with similar system outages having grounded flights in the past.

Air India was among several international carriers, alongside UK domestic airlines, affected by the disruption at Heathrow and other British airports.

Passengers travelling to and from the UK were advised to check their flight status directly with airlines given the scale and unpredictability of the disruption.

NATS, formerly known as National Air Traffic Services, is the primary air traffic control provider for UK airspace, handling flight data processing for arrivals and departures across the country’s busiest airports.

September is a peak month for Indian student travel to the UK, meaning the timing of the outage was particularly disruptive for passengers flying to British universities for the new academic term.

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the exact cause of the technical failure was still being investigated, though the system was confirmed to be operating normally again after the fix.

London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0