Mumbai Mirror: Mumbai: Friday,
April 04, 2014.
Malad
resident Anil D'Souza says it took him 10 months to find out the Delhi-Mumbai
Spicejet flight had been cancelled.
A Malad
resident has threatened legal action against SpiceJet, alleging that the
airline had claimed that his flight from Delhi to Mumbai had been advanced
when, in fact, it had been cancelled.
Advertising
professional Anil D'Souza, 37, said that he missed out on abusiness deal
because of the "airline's lies", which he found out through a Right
to Information Act (RTI) query 10 months after the incident.
"I was
booked on SpiceJet flight SG-109 from Delhi to Mumbai on May 23 last year,
which was scheduled for departure at 10.10 am. On reaching the airport at 8 am,
a few of us were told that the flight had been advanced by five hours, and that
SMSes had been sent to the passengers informing the changes," D'Souza
said.
"I was
told by the airline staff that they couldn't find my mobile phone number or
email ID. I flew to Delhi on a SpiceJet flight and received the
information/updates through SMSes and emails. Did they lose my contact details
all of a sudden?" he asked.
D'Souza spent
around Rs 9,000 on an Indigo ticket to return to Mumbai (the SpiceJet flight
has cost him around Rs 6,000) and was refunded Rs 8,269.80 by the airline two months
later. After the airline rejected his claim of additional compensation, he
filed a query under the RTI Act and demanded to know the status of the flight
in question from the DGCA.
"Replying
to the RTI query, the DGCA said that the flight SG-109 had been cancelled on
May 23. I was shocked at the airline's blatant bluff and have initiated action
in the consumer court. I will also initiate criminal proceedings against
SpiceJet," he said.
A senior
SpiceJet official said that the flight had indeed been advanced by five hours.
"It was operated under a different flight number. Nevertheless, we will
probe the matter," the official said. D'Souza, however, insisted that the
airline had been lying to him for the past 10 months.
"I wrote
to SpiceJet demanding an explanation and got a reply from the airline's
customer relations executive named Mohammed Gulam Warris, who wrote that the
flight in question had been rescheduled due to 'operational reasons'. He
further said that as per the airline records, only travel agency/portal
landline number were updated as flyers' primary numbers," D'Souza said.
Determined to
make the airline pay for the 'lapse', he said, "I will make sure the
airline submits the proof of having contacted all the passengers booked on that
flight. It is obvious that the flight didn't take off."
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