Fourteen passengers of an Indigo flight from Goa to Hyderabad have accused the airline of taking off ahead of schedule and leaving them behind at Goa airport.
The passengers have alleged that Flight 6E 259 was scheduled to depart at 10.50pm on Monday, but left 25 minutes ahead of schedule. Its scheduled time of arrival at Hyderabad airport was 12.05am, but it had already landed at the destination at 11.40pm, said the Times of India report.
While the passengers have alleged that the flight departed earlier than its scheduled time, a spokesperson has rubbished the allegations saying the passengers were reminded through multiple announcements, reported TOI.
One of the Indigo spokespersons said the passengers were declared "gate no-show".
"The boarding gate closed at 10:25pm and they reached the gate at 10.33pm. IndiGo staff looked for them at the airport while making frantic announcements over hand-held loudspeaker," said the airline.
The spokesperson also claimed that they (staff) had called them on the phone number provided by the passengers, but it turned out to be that of their travel agent, Thomas Cook, who didn't provide the phone numbers of the passengers but said that they will be informed.
"Despite no fault on our part, we shifted them to the next morning flight free of charge," the airline said to the newspaper.
A few days ago, in a major security goof, a person was allowed to travel to Nagpur on an IndiGo flight from Delhi though he had a boarding pass for the airline's flight to Indore.
IndiGo confirmed the incident, which took place on Friday, and said that it suspended three of its security personnel for the security lapse.
"The passenger was scheduled to travel to Indore on IndiGo airline's flight 6E 656. At the time of check-in, he was given a boarding pass for the same flight. However, he boarded the aircraft which was bound for Nagpur and no one from the airline noticed this goof," a source said.
The airline in a statement said, "IndiGo regrets the security breach intercepted by its security staff on flight 6E 774 (DEL-NAG), wherein a passenger of flight 6E 656 (DEL-IDR) wrongly boarded the flight 6E 774 and further travelled to Nagpur, after boarding the wrong coach."
Last year, the apex aviation security agency Bureau of Civil Aviation (BCAS) had suspended IndiGo's security training centre licence for lapses in the examination system conducted by it as the same set of question papers was found to have been repeated for many months.
The suspension order was, however, later revoked after the Gurgaon-based airline gave a commitment to the BCAS that its cabin crew will undergo a refresher course and examination once again.
(With PTI inputs)
