NEW DELHI, May 19: A PIA plane with some 80 Lahore-bound passengers was stranded in New Delhi on Saturday after faulty brakes immobilised theBoeign 737 aircraft, PIA officials said.

They said the scheduled flight from Delhi to Lahore was due to take off at the right time at around 1700 hours but the plane couldn't be budged with its wheels irretrievably jammed.

There were some hopes for the passengers to still make it to Lahore late on Saturday night as technical hands got busy to unshackle the locked wheels. If that failed, PIA sources said, there would be no justification for not giving a hotel accomodation to the harrassed travellers till the problem was resolved.

PIA spent close to almost two million rupees the previous Saturday when its Karachi-bound passengers had to be taken to hotels. The afternoon plane had arrived late in the night because of the violence in Karachi that day.