NEW DELHI - Nearly 220 passengers, many of them with small children, were subjected to hours of ordeal at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) here Monday night after Hong Kong based airline Cathay Pacific suddenly cancelled its New Delhi-Hong Kong flight (CX-752).

All the passengers had checked in for boarding and were waiting to board the aircraft when the airline staff arrived to say that the flight stood cancelled.

“There are technical reasons for canceling the flight,” the airlines station manager told harried passengers, refusing to elaborate.

However, airline staff admitted that the flight from Hong Kong did not arrive here due to which the flight from here to Hong Kong had to be cancelled. The flight was to leave originally at 11.55 p.m.

“We are traveling with kids and have hotel bookings on Disneyland and Venetian-Macau. Who is going to compensate us for this. We will never travel by this airline,” said a techie traveling with his family of four, who declined to be named.

Passengers were harassed for over three hours at the airport before being checked out from immigration and sent to hotels at 3 a.m. Tuesday. Airline staff refused to give the contact numbers of the station manager or senior staff for passengers to contact. Many of them had onward connecting flights to cities in the US, Canada, Japan, China and South Korea.

Till Tuesday morning, the airline had not sounded passengers about when the next flight would leave.