HYDERABAD: Air India flight AI615 from Mumbai to Hyderabad scheduled to leave at 6.15 am was overbooked on Saturday. Passengers who had booked their tickets in advance were without seat.
Air India ground staff blamed their revenue department for the unavailability of seats. One of them said that after Mumbai rains the flow of passengers have spiked suddenly that I’d the reason why seats were unavailable. “Even though the tickets are confirmed, we give seats on first-come-first serve basis,” one of the Air India ground staff said.Meanwhile, the passengers were stranded for almost two hours at the International terminus to get their seats confirmed in other flights as the next Air India flight was also over booked. Later a few seats were confirmed in Jet Airways flying to Hyderabad (9W0457) at 7.20am. Passengers travelling to Tirupathi were asked to take a flight to Chennai.
Though the Air India authorities claimed that the problem was restricted to last two days, Jet Airways ground staff said that it was a common problem. “Every time the Air India flights are overbooked, the passengers are mostly shuttled to Jet Airways. It is a mutual understanding,” said a Jet Airways staff.
Meanwhile, passengers who were clueless about the situation were left in a lurch. Many were disappointed as they didn’t know whom to approach regarding the issue.
A couple, who had booked their tickets four months ago, flying to Tirupati have to run from pillar to post to get their seats confirmed. While the husband’s seat was available, the wife’s seat was not confirmed. “They told us that seats were available in a flight to Chennai. I have back problem. If we take that flight to Chennai, we have to book a cab in order to travel to Tirupati which is back-breaking. This sort of service was never expected from Air India,” said his wife. “We had come early to the airport. But the staff members didn’t even inform us about the issue while we were standing in the queue,” she added.