Air India — Non providing of alternative travel arrangements

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

I had booked flight tickets on 08/04/2015 for my family from Kochi to Visakhapatnam(change of plane at Mumbai) to travel on 26/10/2015. However, on 21/10/2015, I was informed by the call centre that the flights were rescheduled and the connection from Mumbai to Visakhapatnam was not possible. Hence, I contacted the reservation department and requested to make some alternate arrangements. But, he tried some options and expressed his helplessness to do anything. He suggested me to cancel the tickets fully or partially and offered full refund of the unused part of ticket. Since, there was no other options, I cancelled the section from Mumbai to Visakhapatnam and booked tickets in some private airlines to reach Visakhapatnam on the same day by paying very high price. However, on 26/10/2015, the Air India flight from Kochi took off only at 11.30hrs(08.25 ETD)and reached Mumbai about 3 hours late and we missed the connection flight. We approached the Air India authorities at the airport and requested to make some alternate arrangements. They washed their hands by telling technical reasons. My daughter, who is studying in IIT, Kharagpur was required to reach there by 27th morning. So I took tickets in other airline and reached Hyderabad and took a train from there reached Visakhapatnam on 27th evening. All these troubles were occurred mainly due to the rescheduling of the original AI flights from COK-BOM & BOM-VTZ in the first place and also due to the inordinate delay of AI682 from Kochi to Mumbai. I lost more than one day time and about Rs 50, 000/- due to the irresponsible behaviour of the airlines. I would not have lost this amount, had Air India made some alternative arrangements when they re-scheduled their flight. I have already complained to the airlines, but they refused to compensate anything.