“I had the worst flight experience of my life,” wrote a user on X as he proceeded to go in detail about his harrowing experience after the Calcutta-Bengaluru IndiGo flight was delayed no less than six times, totalling seven hours. The man, who missed his international flight due to delays, said he would “avoid flying them (IndiGo) again”.
He joined a chorus of voices against the airline amid growing incidents of inordinate delays, cancellations, and not-up-to-the-customer’s-mark resolution.
On Sunday, January 14, a social media user, Kaushal Kumbhat, threatened to sue IndiGo for “gross negligence, mental harassment and apathy” after his son’s Delhi-Istanbul flight was delayed for several hours before being cancelled.
Kumbhat wrote that his son had flown to Delhi from Kolkata on Saturday night to catch a connecting flight to Istanbul.
The CCU-DEL flight scheduled to depart at 9 pm left at 10.45 pm, he said. Kumbhat said at the Delhi terminal, his son was not given the boarding pass for his Istanbul-San Francisco flight, even though it was “booked on the same PNR on an IndiGo jacket”. “Then the ordeal began,” Kumbhat said.
He said that the flight was to take off at 6:10 am on Sunday, but the boarding happened around 6:35. But then, after five hours, the flight was cancelled.
“Till 11.45 am, FOR MORE THAN 5 HOURS, the passengers were sitting in the plane. Finally at 11.45 am, the flight was cancelled. They made everyone deplane. The passengers were asked to collect their bags and then come to the airline counter for hotel vouchers and reassignment of seats. It is now 2.45 pm and the bags have just come – AFTER 3 HOURS,” he said.
Kumbhat further claimed that IndiGo refused to confirm whether they can give his seat on Monday’s flight, even though he was prepared to fly via Mumbai. He said IndiGo did not even offer a cup of tea to passengers who deplaned at 11.45 am.
He asked his son to return to Kolkata and booked tickets on Singapore Airlines.
The X user said “virtual monopoly they enjoy currently has gone to their head” and threatened to sue the airline.
In another instance, a Guwahati-bound IndiGo flight from Mumbai made an emergency landing in Dhaka in the wee hours of Saturday due to sudden bad weather conditions in Assam’s capital city. The flight was delayed initially when taking off from Mumbai, close to midnight.
Congress’s Suraj Singh Thakur, who was onboard the diverted IndiGo flight, said, “I took IndiGo flight 6E 5319 from Mumbai to Guwahati. But due to dense fog, the flight couldn’t land in Guwahati. Instead, it landed in Dhaka. Now all the passengers are in Bangladesh without their passports, we are inside the plane.??”
Just a day before, actor Radhika Apte had shared her harrowing experience with IndiGo, after she and her co-passengers were locked at the aerobridge at Mumbai airport for several hours. Apte said that not only were the staff clueless but all the passengers, including the elderly and the babies, were also deprived of food and bathroom.
The actress shared pictures and wrote, “I had to post this! Today morning I had an flight at 8:30. It’s 10:50 now and the flight has still not boarded. BUT the flight said we were boarding and put all the passengers in the aerobridge and LOCKED IT! The passengers with small babies, elderly people have been locked in for over an hour. The security won’t open the doors. The staff has ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE! Apparently their crew hasn’t boarded (sic).”
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi slammed the airline and sought government action over the incidents.
“Indigo Airline is in a mess.. with delayed take off and arrivals, problem with crew rostering, bad customer service yet neither Ministry of Civil Aviation nor Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has taken this up. The horror story of passengers from Mumbai flying to Bhubaneswar being locked in the aero bridge for over an hour is shameful. Hope some action taken,” Chaturvedi wrote.