IndiGo issues apology after Bengaluru techie has to hack into official website to find lost luggage

Have you ever experienced that panic when you fail to find your luggage at the destination airport? Luggage misplacement or swaps are stuff of nightmares. But Nandan Kumar, a Bengaluru-based software engineer, decided not to panic but use his tech skills to find his luggage. Kumar was travelling from Patna to Bengaluru on an IndiGo Airlines flight. His luggage got mistakenly swapped with that of a  fellow passenger as the two bags were almost identical.

Soo I traveled from PAT - BLR from indigo 6E-185 yesterday. And my bag got exchanged with another passenger.

Honest mistake from both our end. As the bags exactly same with some minor differences. 2/n

— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022

After reaching home he tried to contact IndiGo Airlines customer support. The airlines officials declined to provide him with the details of his co-passenger because of their privacy and data protection regulations. The agent, however, assured him that he would call him after having a word with the other passenger. But Kumar received no such call.

After the call did not work, the agent assured me that they will call me back when they are able to reach the other person. (I am still waiting for that call ) 👇🏻 6/n pic.twitter.com/uy7tkqWUO7

— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022

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After waiting for one whole night, he decided to take charge of the matter. Kumar first put his ingenious tech skills to use. He tried to find out about the passenger using his PNR (Passenger Name Record), but failed. He then decided to try and find his lost luggage by hacking into IndiGo’s official website.  Check his tweets here:

And there in one of the network responses was the phone number and email I’d of my co-passenger.

Ah this was my low-key hacker moment 😇😇 and the ray of hope.

I made note of the details and decided to call the person and try to get the bags swapped. #dev #dataleak #bug pic.twitter.com/9l4pmNDk6V

— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022

According to Kumar’s Twitter thread, as his developer instinct kicked in, he pressed the F12 button on the computer keyboard and opened the developer console on the website to extract the contact details of his co-passenger. Finally, he succeeded in finding the other passenger, who lived nearby. Then they decided to meet at a halfway point to swipe their bags. The story does not end here. Kumar wrote that the other passenger received no call from IndiGo’s customer care while officials claimed that they had called him thrice. Kumar’s story has already garnered over 1,600 retweets and 5,100 likes. He also listed down the loopholes in Indigo’s official website and asked their developers to resolve them immediately for their customers’ data privacy. IndiGo responded with an apology for the inconvenience caused.

Dear,@IndiGo6E take note

1. Fix your IVR and make it more user friendly
2. Make your customer service more proactive than reactive
3. Your website leaks sensitive data get it fixed.

— Nandan kumar (@_sirius93_) March 28, 2022

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The company also assured people that at “no point was the IndiGo website compromised.”

pic.twitter.com/GnnGKypGGJ

— IndiGo (@IndiGo6E) March 29, 2022

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