Patna, Mar 18 (IANS): Passengers of a private airline created ruckus at the Patna airport on Thursday after its Pune flight was delayed for hours and staff refused to reveal the reasons.

The Pune-bound SpiceJet flight SG756 was scheduled to depart from the Jay Prakash Narayan International Airport Patna at 3.05 p.m. and the passengers had completed boarding, when airport officials de-boarded them, claiming there were technical glitches. They have also informed the passengers that the flight would go at 7.30 p.m.

Many passengers waited at the airport while some of them went home. When they returned to the airport and enquired the reason for the delay with officials of the airline concerned, the latter reportedly refused to give exact answer.

Following the incident, the passengers staged a protest at the airport, disrupting operations and not allowing other flights of the airline to take off.

This led to an altercation between the protesting passengers and those of one scheduled to go to Delhi. Some of the women passengers claimed that they were misbehaved by male passengers. As the situation went out of control, the airline officials left the airport and also switched off their mobile phones.

The situation was finally brought under control after CISF personnel intervened.

The SHO of Patna airport police station said that he has not received any complaint in this matter. "We are not aware of whatever happened inside the airport," he said.

Phones of local SpiceJet officials were found switched off.