 "Refund full ticket value and charges for food on delay, DGCA orders SpiceJet")
New Delhi: Your flight time is just about two hours to Delhi but the flight is delayed by close to five hours. There is little communication from the crew about what went wrong and you are deplaned after an aborted takeoff. As if this is not enough, the airline wants to charge you for food and beverages while it figures out what the problem with the aircraft is. Reason enough for you to be livid?
Well, one passenger on a SpiceJet flight from Mumbai on June 16 was furious enough to write a complaint to aviation regulator DGCA about it. And today, the regulator has passed an unprecedented order - SpiceJet has been asked to not only provide full refund of ticket prices for passengers on that flight but also to return the Rs 15,000 it charged these hapless passengers for food and beverages while they waited for the aircraft change.
DGCA sources confirmed the directive, saying when the passenger complaint was received, the regulator carried out detailed inspections of the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder, spoke to engineers, pilots and cabin crew of SpiceJet which were operating this flight.
“The cabin crew was clueless about what is to be done in this situation. Though we found the passenger’s assetion about the captain having not made any announcement on flight delay flase, most of what he complained about was found to be true,” the DGCA sources said. These sources also quoted what the airline said in its reply earlier: “We gave free food and beverage to angry passengers but sold the same stuff to others”.
According to a PTI report, the Boeing 737-800 aircraft (VT-SGO), carrying 172 passengers including two infants, suffered engineering problems which led the pilots to abort the take-off and return to the bay.
A SpiceJet spokesperson denied the charges, saying “SpiceJet, like most airlines, serves food on the ground during the delay in cases like this and we will be responding shortly to DGCA.. We have received no communication from the DGCA regarding serious engineering issues”.
An existing provision in Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) Section 3 clearly specifies what all facilities airlines must provide to passengers affected by the cancellation of or delay in flights for more than two hours.
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