Mangaluru: It was a flight to nowhere for passengers of an Air India Express flight from Mangaluru to Dubai on Thursday night.

The IX 813 flight, carrying 185 passengers, was to land at Sharjah as operations had not fully resumed at Dubai International Airport following Wednesday’s crashlanding of an Emirates flight. But the flight was denied a slot at Sharjah Airport and had to turn back.

It could not, however, land at Mangaluru airport due to bad weather and landed at Kozhikode at 12.05am. The aircraft finally returned to Mangaluru at 2am on Friday, with hapless passengers spending over five hours in air and 50 minutes at Kozhikode Airport.

The Air India Express IX 813 flight had a delayed departure from Mangalore International Airport (MIA) on Thursday. It took off at 8.20pm, instead of the scheduled 7.40pm. A landing slot at Sharjah was confirmed before take-off but after 95 minutes of travel, airport authorities in Sharjah cancelled the slot owing to heavy traffic.