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Pune airport reopens; flyers face check-in rush
Pune’s Lohegaon airport resumed its operation from 8am on Saturday and many flyers faced inconvenience and irritated at the delay at check-in
Pune: The Lohegaon airport resumed its operation from 8am on Saturday with fliers from Delhi welcomed with red roses. However, as the day progressed and more flights landed, many passengers faced inconvenience and irritated at the delay at check-in.
The Pune airport authorities that increased X-ray machines from five to six after the 14-day shut down had to deal with passengers’ anger vented out on Twitter.
Manish Purohit, who boarded a flight for Hyderabad, tweeted “Too much panic at pune airport as flyspicejet decides to delay flight just 20 minutes before boarding. People have connecting flights. No arrangement. Staff is non cooperative.”
“Our Pune to Hyderabad flight was scheduled at 1:10 pm. Boarding was supposed to start at 12:30. But at 12:15 we got a message that the flight was delayed by 1 hour. Their social media team said that the flight was delayed by 1.45 hours … but the staff on ground misled people. Later, they agreed that the flight was indeed 1:45 hours late. I was traveling with an infant, but no assistance or alternative was provided by SpiceJet,” he said.
Another flyer who boarded the flight for Ahmedabad tweeted, “Actually it took 2 hour from Pune airport entry gate till clearing the security check gate. Huge rush observed. Entered departure gate at 3.15 PM & exited security check at 5.10 PM.”
Airport authorities claimed that there was no rush during the initial hours after resuming of flights.
“We had urged people to come early to the airport to avoid queues as rush increased and things got delayed,” said a Pune airport official.
Another airport official said, “We were prepared for the holiday rush and have upgraded the facilities. Once the new airport terminal building is ready next year, things will be better.”
Airports Authority of India (AAI) tweeted “We thank all passengers for their understanding & cooperation while developmental work was being undertaken at Pune Airport. AAI strives to serve the passengers better each day.”
One of the flyer Gaurav Sinha replied to tweet, “Messed up our entire plans in this week and still forcing up to travel for 6 hours upto Mumbaiairport to take early morning flights even for domestic circle despite of 14day of full maintenance closure. Very poor. Aaipunairport.”
Nikhil Dudhbaware tweeted,”@IndiGo6E pathetic service on day 1 from Pune. 6E 6747 PNR ARL8NR we reached the airport on time but there was a huge Q, zero management around 5pm and people missed the flight. Indigo blaming passengers for their mismanagement. Finally after a 1 hour argument they provided an option for connecting flight Nagpur via Indore. Lost the whole day because of mismanagement by IndiGo6E and Pune Airport authority.
“Story does not end here after reaching Nagpur around 4.30 pm it was announced bags need to be collected from belt 1. Waited for 30 minutes and suddenly came to know that bags needed to be collected from belt 2, was waiting for my bags for around half an hr. Saw my 1st bag , in the next 7 min 2nd bag....later I was waiting for 3rd bag and saw everyone had collected bags and left except me and my family. Then spoke to indigo person they also don’t know about it. After a long Struggle they found my bag, mentioned that this bag reached early hence we kept at the office as there was no tag. How they can be so careless. @JM_Scindia can you please punish Indigo for mismanagement. I will raise a separate request on the customer portal for a refund for pathetic service.”
Vivek Yadav tweeted: “Dont know about other places, but at Pune Airport, both @Uber_India and @Olacabs suck. Drivers keep cancelling (sic).”
