‘Delhi-Srinagar for Rs 54K, could fly to UK instead: Flyers still hassled at IGIA amid IndiGo crisis

Among those who were claiming their baggage was Ajay who came to Delhi from Dallas in the United States for a wedding on Friday. “I had come for a few days for the wedding but my luggage couldn’t be traced…I attended the wedding somehow,” he said. However, he added that the airport staff had been “extremely courteous” to him and had even messaged him a picture of his bag once it was traced. “It hardly took me two minutes to claim my bag today,” he said.

Meanwhile, there was no respite from inflated ticket prices with the operations of one of the country’s biggest airlines getting hit. Meghna and Vijayalakshmi landed in Delhi from Srinagar on Sunday afternoon and immediately made a beeline for the ticket counter. “We had a direct flight to Bengaluru on Friday…we waited till late evening at the airport before they told us that the flight had been cancelled,” said Meghna. When the two women checked for other options to take them home, they saw that the next flight to Bengaluru would cost them Rs 60,000 per person. “We instead flew down to Delhi for Rs 54,000,” said Meghna. According to her, the airlines offered them a replacement ticket for Monday but that was too late for them. “At these current rates, I could fly to London,” quipped Vijayalakshmi.

On the other hand, IndiGo ground staff handling the ticket counter looked exhausted. “Today is not as bad as the last few days,” admitted one of the staff members. “We have very supportive seniors, that’s how we have survived. We feel bad for the passengers, too,” she said. Outside the terminal, a flight captain flatly said that they had “seen this coming” for a long time. “You can’t make pilots overnight. It takes three years to make a pilot with zero hours. It takes five years to become a captain…anyone who has been in the system knew this would happen one day or another,” he said, pleading anonymity.

A group of five men sat far away from the crowd gathered in front of the IndiGo ticket counter. One of them slept with his hands folded on top of his luggage. The group of men had travelled to Delhi from Punjab’s Anandpur Sahib and were supposed to reach Dubai on Friday, but saw that their flight had been cancelled. “They told us to come back today (Sunday) and again the flight has been cancelled,” said Taljinder Singh. “We went back home (to Anandpur Sahib) on Friday and came back today…this back and forth worries our families, it exhausts us and it achieves nothing,” said Praveen Kumar.

The men fretted about reaching Dubai soon as their employer there was beginning to get annoyed at them. “It was supposed to be our first day on the job (at a construction company) tomorrow and now the boss already thinks we’re making excuses to not join on time,” said Taljinder.

Another passenger, Jaswinder Singh, standing near the ticket counter, anxiously shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I have my last round of interviews tomorrow in Mumbai. The airline has confirmed my ticket to Goa but my connecting flight from there has been cancelled…I need to get to Mumbai by tonight somehow,” he said.