
Well, now and then we get to know several things about domestic flight operations in India. An IndiGo customer was denied boarding and had to buy a new ticket after missing his flight because of a last-minute time change by the airline. Just 2.5 hours before the scheduled departure, Prakhar Gupta claimed in a series of posts on X (formerly known as Twitter) that the airline had pre-planned his flight by 15 minutes. He also mentioned that he only received a text message about the change rather than an email.
Taking to X, Gupta wrote, “How do you change a flight time and prepone it by 2.5 hours before the flight at 4 am in the morning, expect me to make it on time, and then when I do get there 5 minutes behind on the new time, you do not let me check in my bag and make me pay for a new flight?"
Gupta added that he was treated rudely by the ground crew, who forced him to move between counters to fix the problem.
“Your staff was rude to me and my co-passenger, accusing us of filming when we were not filming, because I politely asked them the same question- How could they change flight time two hours before a flight and charge me extra?" he continued.
He also criticised the staff’s unprofessional behaviour, saying, “They were also unprofessional, playing very distasteful private voice messages to each other on speaker phone and giggling at the obscenity while ‘resolving’ our issue."
He further revealed that the airline charged him Rs 3,000 per ticket for the new flight. “And the language of the resolution is suspect – the lady literally began with ‘Sir, the actual charge of this change is Rs 40,000 (original ticket for not more than 15) but I will charge you only a minimum price of Rs 3,000 per customer’. A 90 per cent discount? Instantly? Without me asking for it? Super suspicious."
Airline's reaction
In response to Prakhar Gupta's post, the Indigo airline stated, "We are currently looking into this and will reach out to you soon to resolve the matter,"
Soon after Gupta's post went viral, social media users started sharing their experiences in the comment section. "This happened to us as well! They advanced the flight and didn't inform us - no text, WhatsApp or email. Then threatened to not check our luggage in," one user wrote.?
While another one wrote, "Same thing messed up our schedule quite a bit last week, en route to Udaipur from Hyderabad. You tend to optimize to the minute for early morning flights and so, even preponing by 10 mins is absolutely unacceptable. The best part? The flight was delayed by over an hour anyway which was communicated after we reached the gate."
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