BENGALURU: It was a small victory last week for a senior citizen couple, who got a favourable consumer court verdict ordering Air India as well as Make My Trip to jointly compensate them for the huge delay in their flight to Delhi, which upset their African Safari vacation plans. The Court ordered them to pay Rs 1 lakh for the mental agony caused, Rs 38,000 towards ticket cost, and Rs 10,000 as a lawyer fee.
S Ramabhadran (76), a chartered accountant, and his wife R Vatsala (75), a homemaker, never imagined their trip to Kilimanjaro on December 19, 2019, would turn into a nightmare. Ramabhadran recollected to TNIE, “Our ticket was booked via Make My Trip portal on an Air India flight from Bengaluru to Delhi, and from there by Ethiopian Airlines to Kilimanajaro. It was a ten-day trip and one of my daughters was to join us in Africa from the US with my 2 granddaughters.”
The Bengaluru flight left 1 hour 45 minutes late. When we reached Delhi, the international airline staff said the boarding gates were closed and our pre-checked luggage had been deplaned, he added. The couple then had to wait nearly 4 hours in the biting cold. “We had packed for the hot weather in Africa and had to brave 4 degrees celsius in Delhi without any winter wear. I am a diabetic and we were not offered any refreshments or support.
To make things worse, they said we could not use the restroom inside the airport and we had to take a roundabout route to use those outside.” the septuagenarian said. Despite our request to Air India staff to book us on flights to Kilimanjaro the following day, they said there were no tickets. “My daughter paid Rs 4.75 lakh and booked new tickets on the same flight they claimed to have none available,”
Ramabhadran added. Once they were back, they kept reaching out to MMT and Air India with no response. “After waiting for a year, we sent a legal notice,” he said. The court verdict on April 17 in the case they filed in May 2022 was some consolation.