Passengers on Air India Express Flight IX 235 from Mumbai to Muscat faced an ordeal on the night of February 14–15, 2026, when a technical snag grounded their Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft for roughly ten hours, triggering an overnight delay, repeated boarding procedures and mounting frustration at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. The disruption, which also cascaded into a near ten-hour delay of the return Muscat–Mumbai leg IX 236, has once again placed the spotlight on operational reliability and passenger care at India’s fast-growing low-cost international carriers.
What Happened to Flight IX 235 on the Night of the Delay
Air India Express Flight IX 235 is the airline’s nightly service from Mumbai to Muscat, typically scheduled to depart at 21:50 India Standard Time and arrive in Oman at 23:20 Gulf Standard Time. On Saturday night, February 14, 2026, the flight began boarding as usual at Mumbai’s Terminal 2, using a Boeing 737 Max 8 registered VT-BXT. Passengers had taken their seats when, according to local media reports, the crew and maintenance teams detected a technical issue shortly before departure, prompting an abrupt halt to the flight.
Instead of a short delay, the problem kept the aircraft on the ground for hours. Passengers were reportedly asked to disembark after boarding, undergo security procedures again and wait in the terminal area while engineers attended to the snag. Through the night and into the early hours of Sunday, departure estimates were revised multiple times, with the flight ultimately operating almost ten hours behind schedule.
The delay on IX 235 had a knock-on effect on its paired return service IX 236 from Muscat to Mumbai. Data from real-time flight trackers showed IX 236, also operated with a Boeing 737 Max 8, departing Muscat around 10:10 local time on February 15 instead of the scheduled 00:20 departure, arriving in Mumbai in the early afternoon rather than early morning. The extended delay was recorded at around nine hours and fifty minutes.
Technical Snag Triggers Safety Protocols and Reboarding
While Air India Express has not publicly detailed the exact nature of the technical snag, such incidents typically involve anomalies detected in aircraft systems, sensors or cockpit indications during pre-flight checks. When that happens, airline and airport safety protocols require that the aircraft remain grounded until the issue has been identified, rectified and tested to the satisfaction of engineering and safety teams.
According to accounts carried by regional travel and lifestyle outlets citing passengers, the snag surfaced just before departure, after passengers had occupied their seats. Once the issue was flagged, crew informed travellers that they would have to disembark. Because the aircraft had already been prepared for departure and secured, standard security rules required everyone to undergo screening procedures again before any subsequent reboarding.
For passengers already braced for a late-night international sector, being cycled through the boarding and security process more than once compounded fatigue and stress. Yet aviation experts consistently stress that such steps are mandatory in order to ensure that any technical problem is fully understood and the aircraft is safe to operate. In the context of a modern narrow-body fleet and busy night-time operations, the decision to delay and recheck, while problematic for schedules, is considered preferable to dispatching an aircraft with unresolved technical questions.
Passengers Complain of Confusion and Poor Communication
The strongest criticism emerging from the incident has centered not on the decision to delay for safety reasons, but on how the disruption was handled at the airport. Passengers quoted in regional media, including outlets referencing reports from the Times of Oman, described a lack of clear information through the night as departure times on displays and announcements continued to change.
Travellers said they were given shifting estimates of when the flight might depart, only for those times to be pushed back repeatedly. Some reported feeling “stranded” in the terminal with no firm guidance on whether to expect further delays, a cancellation or a change of aircraft. The perception that frontline staff could not provide definitive answers or consistent updates quickly turned the technical issue into a larger customer service controversy.
Such communication gaps are familiar to frequent flyers across many airlines, particularly during irregular operations late at night when staffing can be leaner and operational decisions are being updated in real time. However, for passengers who had already endured an overnight wait and repeated security checks, the absence of clear, timely messaging left a lasting impression, with some taking to social media to air their grievances and question the carrier’s preparedness for long disruptions.
Impact on the Oman–India Travel Corridor
The Mumbai–Muscat route is a busy link between India and Oman, serving business travellers, tourists and a substantial population of Indian expatriate workers based in the Gulf. Air India Express operates IX 235 as part of its wider India–Gulf network, where night-time departures and early-morning arrivals are structured to maximize aircraft utilization and connectivity at both ends.
On February 14–15, the grounding of IX 235 in Mumbai and the subsequent delay to IX 236 in Muscat disrupted that finely tuned schedule. Passengers arriving in Muscat nearly half a day behind schedule faced missed connections, workday disruptions and additional costs for rearranged transfers or accommodations. Those booked on the return service to Mumbai similarly saw carefully timed itineraries collapse as the delayed IX 236 pushed their arrival into the middle of Sunday afternoon.
For Oman-bound travellers, including residents returning from visits to India, the delay also intersected with personal and professional obligations, including visa timelines, shift work and onward regional travel plans. While a single night’s disruption may not alter long-term traffic patterns, repeated incidents of extensive delays on key Gulf routes can erode passenger confidence, particularly in a competitive market where multiple carriers operate similar sectors.
Compensation, Care and Regulatory Expectations
One of the central questions for affected passengers is what assistance and compensation they are entitled to when an international flight is delayed for close to ten hours due to a technical fault. Under India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation regulations, airlines are required to provide meals, refreshments and, in some cases, hotel accommodation depending on the length of the delay and the time of day. For long overnight disruptions, expectations typically include access to food and a place to rest, particularly for families and elderly passengers.
Reports from the Mumbai airport incident suggest that some passengers questioned whether the support provided was adequate given the duration of the delay and the repeated changes in departure time. Those concerns mirror broader debates about how Indian carriers interpret and implement DGCA norms around passenger care, especially when the cause of delay is categorized as a technical or operational issue rather than extraordinary circumstances such as severe weather or airspace closures.
Internationally, airlines are also under growing scrutiny to ensure that their customer care policies match the realities of congested air travel and aging or heavily utilized fleets. While Air India Express is not subject to European-style compensation rules on these sectors, the expectations of globally mobile travellers are shaped by experiences with foreign carriers and by widely publicized examples of regulatory enforcement in other jurisdictions. The gap between regulatory minimums and perceived fairness has become a recurring theme in passenger reactions to major delays.
Spotlight on Air India Express Operations and Fleet
The incident involving IX 235 comes at a time when Air India Express is in the midst of an expansion and modernization drive under the Tata Group’s broader integration of Air India and its low-cost operations. The airline has been adding Boeing 737 Max aircraft to its fleet and ramping up frequencies on key international routes, including those linking Indian metros and tier-two cities with the Gulf and Southeast Asia.
Operational performance metrics, however, show that the Mumbai–Muscat service has faced punctuality challenges. Flight analytics platforms report that a large proportion of IX 235 services in recent weeks have departed or arrived behind schedule, with average delays significantly higher than global norms for short- to medium-haul flights. While most of those delays are far shorter than the overnight disruption seen on February 14–15, the pattern underscores the operational pressures on the route.
Technical snags are not unusual in modern aviation, especially on fleets that are intensively scheduled. Airlines typically rely on quick-turn maintenance, component swaps and engineering expertise to minimize disruption. Yet when a fault cannot be rapidly resolved or requires specific spare parts, even a single aircraft grounding can unravel an entire day’s rotation, as appears to have happened in this case with the paired IX 235 and IX 236 services between Mumbai and Muscat.
Passenger Experience and Trust in Low-Cost International Travel
For many travellers on India–Gulf routes, low-cost carriers like Air India Express offer a crucial lifeline: direct flights at relatively affordable fares that connect workplaces, homes and families across borders. The trade-off often lies in leaner on-board services and tighter schedules compared with full-service airlines. Incidents like the extended delay of IX 235 test that trade-off, forcing passengers to weigh cost savings against the risk of major schedule disruptions.
In this case, passengers voiced frustration not only about the loss of time but also about the emotional toll of a night spent in transit limbo. For workers returning to Oman for new contracts, students heading back to classes or families traveling with children, the combination of fatigue, uncertainty and incomplete information created a sense of vulnerability. Several observers have argued that clear, honest and frequent communication from the airline would have gone a long way toward preserving trust, even if the delay itself was unavoidable for safety reasons.
The episode also illustrates how quickly operational incidents can spill into the public domain. With passengers sharing real-time updates and photos from the terminal, and regional outlets aggregating those accounts, airline responses are now scrutinized far beyond the immediate group of affected travellers. For carriers seeking to build an international brand, managing that perception in moments of crisis has become as important as marketing new routes or cabin products.
What Comes Next for Air India Express and Its Passengers
As of February 15, IX 235 was once again listed as operating on schedule between Mumbai and Muscat, indicating that the aircraft involved has returned to service or been substituted by another frame. The operational disruption appears, for now, to be limited to the single rotation that spanned February 14–15, with no wider cancellations reported on the route in subsequent schedules.
For affected passengers, however, the experience is unlikely to fade quickly. Many will now be watching closely to see whether Air India Express reaches out proactively with formal communication, clarifications about the technical issue and any offers of compensation or goodwill gestures. The airline’s handling of post-incident customer relations could influence how quickly it can rebuild confidence on this and other routes.
For the broader travelling public on the India–Oman corridor, the episode serves as a reminder of both the complexity and fragility of modern air travel. Even with relatively new aircraft and established schedules, a single technical snag can ripple across continents and time zones, stranding passengers overnight and testing the resilience of airline operations. How carriers prepare for, communicate during and recover from such events will remain a key measure by which travellers judge where to place their trust when they next book a ticket.