BENGALURU: The baggage system at Kempegowda International Airport failed for 15 minutes on Sunday morning, delaying departing passengers, particularly on IndiGo. Passengers, including author Amish Tripathi, took to Twitter to convey their agony.
The volume of passengers at the airport was very high due to the festive season. Many departing IndiGo flights suffered delays. It is understood that the check-in baggage belt broke down sometime between 8.20 am and 8.40 am.
Tripathi tweeted, “Very poor service by Indigo and Bengaluru airport. Our team was travelling from Bangalore to Pragyaraj for a shoot and 2 of our bags have been lost. No proper answers, no solutions offered.” Vipul Mehta, another flyer, tweeted that many bags were misplaced at KIA and the plane took off without bags. Referring to the Bengaluru-Bareilly flight, he said, “Officials asked helpless people, including parents with a toddler, to come the next day and check.”
A spokesperson of Bangalore International Airport Ltd, said, “The baggage system at Bengaluru airport failed for a short while, but stabilised within a few minutes. The baggage system failure which lasted for about 15 minutes seems to have had a cascading effect with IndiGo trying their best to cope. However, this has not impacted the flights or baggage of other airlines.” BIAL further said it has offered all support to IndiGo. “We are already working closely with our baggage handling system partner to check all factors that could have caused this issue and will have it redressed,” it added.
Meanwhile, IndiGo stated, “Owing to the check-in baggage belt failure at KIA, our flights from Bengaluru are facing delays. We are implementing measures to minimise the impact on other flights. We are also working with BIAL.”
IndiGo flyer forced to pay Rs 3,600 extra
Sports physiotherapist Anurag Gupta accused the IndiGo staff of not letting him and his wife travel on a flight to Vadodara, despite reaching before time. “We had done a web check-in and got our bag tags by mail. We reached KIA at 5.35 am for our 6.55 am flight. The IndiGo staffer at the check-in counter said only tags obtained at the airport would be accepted. My wife went to get it, and later we were told to stand at the end of the queue. Finally, we were told we could not board that flight due to delay,” he alleged, adding, “We ended up booking tickets on the same flight the next day.” Gupta said, “Despite booking my ticket on the flexi plan scheme, which allows changes without any extra cost, we had to pay Rs 1,800 extra for each of our tickets.” IndiGo did not respond to a query on this issue.