Hyderabad, January 10: Seventy passengers of a Mumbai-bound Spicejet flight were left stranded in Visakhapatnam on Saturday night. After issuing them boarding passes, the airline informed that the plane will not take off as the duty hours of the pilot was over.
A harried passenger Sumit said, “A bizarre reason was given for the pilot’s duty hours which were prescribed by the DGCA.”
While Praveen Kumar added, “I have a connecting flight to Saudi Arabia from Mumbai which I won’t be able to take. I am bearing a loss of almost Rs 15,000.”
The passengers of Spicejet SG 402 were issued boarding passes for the flight to Mumbai via Hyderabad and even their luggage was put on board. Then came the shocker.
Spicejet authorities announced that the flight to Mumbai was cancelled. Passengers were told to either cancel their tickets and take their money back or fly only up to Hyderabad.
“They mentally harassed us. They told us to submit our Mumbai boarding passes, tore them and then gave us only till Hyderabad,” Supriya, a passenger, said.
Another angry passenger Mohd Mushadir said, “I spoke with the higher management of Spicejet in Delhi who hung up on me after saying he will not speak to us. I ask, if they don’t talk to their clients, who do they talk to?”
After the passengers protested, Spicejet agreed to fly Mumbai-bound passengers halfway to Hyderabad. But there are questions the airline needs to answer.
Despite several attempts there was no response from spicejet. Since it was a Sunday, most other flights are either booked completely or priced exorbitantly. Repeated appeals by these stranded passengers to the management for alternate arrangements are also going unheard. Now the passengers have been left on their own to find a probable solution.
——-Agencies