In fact, a couple who reached there in the morning to receive a relative who was scheduled to arrive from Port Blair, had to walk for a kilometer to use the toilet located at the nearest police station since the only toilet outside the terminal building was locked and they would not be allowed to enter the lounge to use the toilet there.

At 11 am, Sandip Singh and wife Eawray had to eventually walk to the Airport Police Station.

“It was a horrible experience. I do not know when the bandh will be withdrawn. If the flight arrives late, we would have to wait,” said Sandip, who had come from Bandel, a town 50 Km from Kolkata.

Airport sources said only 10 out of 25 domestic and international flights took off this morning. While flights of Air-India, Jet Airways and Jetlite took off as scheduled in the morning, services of other private airlines were badly hit.

Kim Jincheua and his family were scheduled to leave for Bangkok at 11.55 am. They reached the airport early morning, before the bandh was started. The South Korean family did not know their flight would be delayed by nearly eight hours because of the bandh. Aomain, a French tourist, arrived at 11 am and was stuck inside the airport for about six hours.

Since morning, hundreds of passengers were stranded inside the airport building without any facilities.