Fliers’ body writes to PM over flight delay

The Air Passengers Association of India (APAI), in a letter to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, sought punitive action against IndiGo for allegedly mistreating passengers

The Air Passengers Association of India (APAI), in a letter to the Prime Minister on Tuesday, sought punitive action against IndiGo for allegedly mistreating passengers after a Lucknow-Hyderabad flight was delayed for over eight hours last week.

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APAI has sought to know the amount of compensation paid by the airline to passengers while accusing them of treating customers like a ‘flock of sheep’. APAI said the airline had blamed bad weather in Delhi to be the reason for the delay, which according to them was ‘false, frivolous and unworthy of even a mention’.

Flight 6E 278, which was scheduled to take off at 9.15pm on December 12 with 132 passengers, took off at around 6am the next day. While few passengers were accommodated on alternate flights and few were given a refund, around 100 passengers alleged they were made to sit at the aerobridge for hours until they forced the airline to allow them to go back to the boarding area. Senior airport officials had said passengers got aggressive and were not ready to leave the aerobridge even when airline staff requested them to wait in the boarding area. Sources privy to the matter said the flight got delayed due to cascading effect of bad weather at Delhi and then the exhaustion of flight duty time limit of the cockpit crew.

The letter added, “...It is not true that there was any problem with the weather according to reliable sources.”

Despite several attempts to contact IndiGo, the airline did not comment over the issue.