Indigo Airlines — Appalling experience after cancellation of IndiGo international flight

Case Ref No: 39973526

Extremely disappointing experience with IndiGo after an international flight cancellation

* Our international IndiGo flight was cancelled, and the earliest alternative IndiGo could arrange was around 24 hours later.

* At the airport, I specifically asked IndiGo to arrange accommodation, transport and meals. I was told they could not provide them.

* Instead, IndiGo issued INR 2, 000 IndiGo vouchers per passenger. I explicitly said I did not want vouchers and would prefer the equivalent value in money, but this was ignored. After this experience, I have no intention o[censored]sing IndiGo again, making these vouchers effectively useless to me.

* Our original transit was only 2½ hours. The replacement itinerary left us with a 7-hour transit at Mumbai airport for which no meals/ lounge/ other arrangements were provided

* When I myself approached them- I was sent from one IndiGo counter to another for around. Eventually, an IndiGo employee Mr Tejas sent me to a restaurant (Vaango) and said he would message them for authorisation to provide our meal. So after 45 mins call to Indigo plus 1 hour of chasing Indigo guys in the airport, when we finally reached the restaurant, no such message had been received. The restaurant employee eventually spoke to his own boss, who kindly agreed to provide us with the meal. This was not arranged by IndiGo. Nor any Lounge/ room service was provided.

* After returning to the UK, I contacted IndiGo and was told that although additional compensation was not being offered, reasonable expenses could be considered if I provided receipts. I provided the receipts I had retained, including a dinner receipt and airport taxi receipts.

* IndiGo then introduced another requirement: bank statements showing the corresponding transactions- I explained that the taxi expenses and dinner bill had been paid in cash, so there are naturally no corresponding bank transactions. I was then told that IndiGo could not do anything about it.
* I was never advised at the airport that I needed to retain specific evidence for every expense, nor was I told that cash payments would subsequently be rejected without bank evidence. We use cash in India to avoid uk card related transaction fees.

In short: cancelled international flight → 24-hour delay → no accommodation, transport or meaningful meal assistance → 7-hour transit instead of 2½ hours → hours spent chasing IndiGo staff → even the promised restaurant arrangement was not communicated → expenses later supported with receipts → then a new bank-statement requirement was introduced for cash payments - no reimbursement for basic expenses claimed

This has been an extraordinarily frustrating experience, not only because of the cancellation itself but because of the way IndiGo has handled the passenger afterwards. I would not choose IndiGo again and never recommend them to anyone!