Complainant : Advocate Apurva Kolhe.
Respondent : IndiGo airlines, through its director.
On 11/07/2021, I had booked round trip air tickets starting from 15/08/2021 to 19/08/2021, for Nagpur to Kochi through the online booking agent MakeMyTrip. The flight scheduled on 19/08/2021 was a connecting flight starting from Kochi via Bengaluru to Nagpur.
On 19/08/2021, my first flight was Spicejet for Kochi to Bengaluru scheduled to start at 4:35 pm and reach at 5:50 pm. Thereafter my second flight was IndiGo for Bengaluru to Nagpur 6E-486 scheduled to start at 10:05 pm and reach at 11:45 pm.
Suddenly on 12/08/2021, 6 days prior to scheduled departure I was informed through a telephonic message that my flight 6E-486 for the second leg of journey from Bengaluru to Nagpur has been cancelled due to "operational reasons" and therefore I am rebooked in flight 6E-6802 for 8:20 am to 10:00 am. As I was reaching Bengaluru via Spicejet at 5:50 pm in the evening, I couldn't have taken the rebooked direct flight which was preponed by almost 14 hours and was departing from Bengaluru in the morning. Moreover, all other flights for Bengaluru to Nagpur were not only connecting flights but also scheduled for departure in the morning.
Therefore I had to cancel both the flights i.e. Spicejet and IndiGo at the expense of freshly booking another flight from Kochi to Nagpur.
The same cause me financial loss and great mental agony for going through unreasonable inconvenience, the tedious customer care and the cancellation process.
It needs to be noted that IndiGo is habitual of hiding its unethical practice of cancelling insufficiently booked flights under the garb of "operational reason". The operational reasons described by IndiGo in its own policy, are
those that are unforeseeable in nature. It is strange that how could IndiGo have cancelled the flight 6 days prior to journey without assigning any specific operational reason. That itself leads to drawing an inference that the flight was in fact cancelled due to foreseeable reasons in form of flight being insufficiently booked.
My complaint is that IndiGo absolutely failed to provide any effective assistance or provide any feasible alternative arrangement and left me with no options thereby forcefully making me cancel the flight and make an alternative arrangement at my own expense. I will also be serving upon them a detailed legal notice of demand for liquidated and unliquidated damages in form of compensation for the amount of professional loss and mental harassment caused to me.
Date - 07/03/2022
Place - Nagpur
Regards,
Adv. Apurva Kolhe
Apr 15, 2022
Complaint marked as Resolved
IndiGo customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.
Verified Support
Mar 12, 2022
IndiGo Customer Care's response Dear Sir
We understand your concern. Please know that it is never our intention to disrupt passengers' travel plans however, please know our operations depend on various factors that determine our flight schedule.
We request for your understanding!
Regards
Team IndiGo
We are concerned to take note of your disappointment. It was never our intention to cause hassle.
Please know that it is never our intention to disrupt our passenger's travel plans. However, we sincerely request you to reach out to with us PNR details via Twitter/Facebook DM so we can check and assist you in the best possible way.
Regards
Team IndiGo