The Hindu : New Delhi News : Passengers claim airline made them miss flight

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 25, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Passengers claim airline made them miss flight

Staff Reporter

Not possible to turn them away if passengers arrived on time, say Air Deccan officials

NEW DELHI: A number of passengers scheduled to board an Air Deccan flight from Delhi to Bangalore on Wednesday claimed that they missed the flight as they were not allowed to check in even though they had reached the airport on time.

“We reached the Air Deccan check-in counter at Terminal 1B at 7-05 p.m. for the 8 p.m. flight. We requested the official there to check the identity of the passengers and allow us to board the flight. The person issuing the boarding passes was instructed by another official not to give out any more passes. They had ample time to complete the formalities, but they did not let us in,” said Mysore-based Prakash Jain, member of a 40-strong group comprising women and children travelling to Bangalore after completing an excursion trip to Delhi and the Vaishno Devi shrine.

Another passenger, Mayank Gupta, who is studying medicine in Bangalore, complained that he reached the counter at 7-15 p.m. but his group was made to wait for some time before being told they would not be entertained.

Asked to wait

“We were asked to wait for some time. We kept standing there and later they told us that they will not issue any boarding passes. The officials were not willing to speak to us or help us in anyway,” charged Mayank.

There were some passengers scheduled to fly with the same airline to Hyderabad who claimed that even though they were issued boarding passes, the security check could not be completed within time owing to which they missed their 9 p.m. flight.

“I reached the airport at 8-10 p.m. No one was there at the counter. Later they gave us the boarding pass but before we could finish the security check, the flight had taken off,” charged Manmohan Acharya.

For its part, the airline maintained it “was not possible to turn away passengers if they arrived on time”.

“We close the counter half an hour before the flight departure. So if someone arrived before that, he/she would definitely have been allowed. We keep making the announcements till the last minute. Why would we do something like that to our passengers,” asked a spokesperson of the airline.

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