Escape from Siberia: Air India passengers arrive at SFO after 24+ hours marooned in Russia

More than 200 passengers set foot into San Francisco International Airport late Friday after being stranded in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk for more than 24 hours. 

“They just went through the longest flight of their lives,” said Mountain View resident Mayank Gupta, on the verge of tears, clutching the hands of his parents. 

Air India Flight 183 left Delhi for San Francisco on Thursday morning when, two hours into the journey, pilots announced they needed to divert the direct route for a precautionary pit stop in the endless steppe.

The airline later announced over X that the diversion was due to a “potential issue in the cargo hold area” detected by the cockpit crew. 

“Air India regrets the inconvenience to passengers arising from this diversion, which was taken in the interest of safety,” the airline wrote on X Thursday.

The unplanned diversion happened to come shortly before a widespread tech outage led to tens of thousands of flight cancellations and delays around the world.

Stepping out into a rainy Siberian summer night, the Flight’s 225 passengers were shuffled into Krasnoyarsk International Airport just after midnight to a city so far in the eastern reaches of Russia, it is nearly equidistant to Beijing and Moscow. 

Air India does not have its staff at Krasnoyarsk International Airport and had to send delegates from India’s consulate in Moscow overnight to accommodate passengers. 

“I completely freaked out,” said Fremont resident Reena Khinvasara, who waited with her husband and two boys for her parents to arrive. “I was at work when my mom called me and she was like, ‘We are in Russia,’ and I’m like, ‘Sorry, what? What are you doing there?’”

According to Delhi resident Somdatta Chatterjee, passengers who did not require a visa to enter Russia were offered hotel rooms an hour-and-a-half away from the airport, but most declined.

“The guys over there took good care of us,” said Abhisek Lahiri, an award-winning Indian Classical musician and Delhi resident traveling to the Bay Area to give master classes on the sarod.

It was Ashutosh Tripathi’s parents’ first time traveling outside of India, so he was already nervously checking the flight status on Air India’s website. When he saw that his parents’ flight had stopped in Russia, his heart dropped. 

“I was very worried,” he told The Standard, anxiously waiting for his parents to arrive at SFO. “Me and my siblings from India—we were awake the whole time trying to find out if they were OK.”

According to Tripathi and other Bay Area residents awaiting their families and friends, communication from Air India was abysmal. 

“I even tried to call the airport, but they were speaking Russian,” Tripathi said. “By chance, my neighbor is from Ukraine, so he was able to talk to them —but they also did not provide the right information. They said the passengers were already on the new flight, but that was not true. They were still stranded.”

Despite the lack of communication, passengers arrived in SFO’s international terminal looking fresh and happy. 

Having barely slept a wink, Tripathi welcomed his parents, who greeted their son with wide smiles.

“They treated us excellently,” his father said of the Russian airport employees. “This is very good.”

Just before 1 a.m. PST Friday, it was announced that a ferry flight was airborne from Mumbai to bring the stuck passengers to San Francisco. By 10 a.m. Friday, Air India announced the flight was airborne and scheduled to arrive at SFO by 8 p.m.

Commercial flights have not operated directly between Russia and the United States since March 2022, when the U.S. banned Russian flights from its airspace. However, U.S. airlines had already been withdrawing services to Russia since it invaded Ukraine.

This is the second time an Air India-operated Boeing aircraft has had to make an emergency stop in Siberia on its way to SFO. 

According to Reuters, in June 2023, a flight from Delhi was forced to land in Magadan after a technical issue with its engine. The flight was diverted to Krasnoyarsk prior to another global tech outage that grounded flights around the world.