BENGALURU: Close on the heels of reputed sitarist Shubhendra Rao slapping a legal notice on Air India, five honeymoon couples who travelled by a GoAir flight from Bengaluru to Phuket are now preparing to do the same.
An over eight-hour delay on the part of a GoAir flight in taking off from the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) on January 24 made the couples miss a Phuket City tour package as well as specially curated events for them at their hotel.
Their main grouse is the “misinformation and lack of care towards passengers.”
Four of the couples — Bhavi and Gayatri Patel, Arjun and Chandini Patel, Siddharth and Niyati Patel, Sagar Modi and Umomi Modi — are from Gujarat, while Hemal Kanani and Priyanka Rathi, an advocate couple, is from Mumbai.
They were on board along with 163 other passengers on flight G8-041, which took an air turn back after flying for 30 minutes due to warning signals received by the cockpit crew on the possibility of a door in the flight’s luggage bay opening up.
When waiting at KIA, many passengers took to the tarmac in protest and the CISF had to be called to control the crowd.
The advocate couple is now readying the legal notice to be sent to GoAir.
“We are asking for compensation for each of us to the tune of Rs 1.1 lakh and will be giving the airline a 15-day period as mandated by law. If there is still no response, then we will file a case in the consumer court,” Kanani told TNIE over phone.
Priyanka charged, “Imagine spending so many hours, most of them inside flights, with no clear information and only lies. Milk and biscuits are what we were all given. The manner in which passengers were treated is my real issue and the airline has to answer for that.”
Bhavi said, “A day tour of Phuket City and a Special Day occasion including poolside dinner was organised by the hotel for us. Each couple had paid above Rs 8,000 just for this but couldn’t avail any of it. Due to other tours planned during our stay, we returned without a tour of the picturesque Phuket. We need to be compensated.”
Despite repeated calls and messages, GoAir declined to give any official statement.