Jet Airways — Overbooking!

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

Dear all, I would like to lodge a formal complaint against your airline staff and booking policies. Me and my friend were due to fly on the JetKonnect flight from mumbai-kozhikode on 8th April at 11 35 am after flying in from ahmedabad early in the morning. We approached the check in counter at 9 45am, we were met by front desk office Ms. Jennifer. At first, she asked us to adjust our luggage. On asking her for seats together, she told us she will try her best. While we were waiting, she never gave us a clear picture on the situation. At 10 05am she told us that there were no seats on the flights as the flight was overbooked, we were asked to wait till 11am. We patiently waited till 11am extending our full cooperation. At 11am she tells us that we were being issued standby boarding passes, incase of no show we would be allowed to fly. Please note that this was after arriving on the airport well before time and having booked our tickets well in advance! We asked to speak to the supervisor in charge, at 11 15am Ms.Leoine came and spoke to us and we explained that this situation is totally unacceptable as we needed to attend our brother's wedding on the very same day at 6 30pm. She said that they would book us to a flight to kochi and give us a compensation of Rs.3000 per passenger. Cochi (Btw...for everyone who isn't aware) is 250 kms away from our destination in kozhikode, which is 4 hrs by road. She informed us that the kochi flight would leave at 1 25pm and arrive at kochi at 3 35pm and we could take a cab thereafter, which we will have to manage on our own.In the mean time, we were told that they have requested other passengers if they could postpone their flights. We refused to accept this as a plausible solution. We then asked to speak to some senior manager. After waiting for 30 mins for the manager to appear, with Noone attending to us in the mean time Mrs.Anamika Rane approached and explained the same option to us again. We refused to budge, they projected the whole situation to us like "take it or leave it". We demanded some higher authorities too look into the same, but in vain.After a lot of discussion, we requested them to atleast pre-book the cab for us at the cochi airport to ensure no further wastage of time! They refused to do that as well saying it's not possible that we have to go there and book ourselves, which we forced to do. We were told that someone would assist us at the kochi airport. Once, we arrived at the kochi airport there was Noone to assist us. Later someone from jetairways appeared and she too was of no help at all, she left us saying she would be back in 30 mins. We managed the cab transport on our own. After lot of traffic and hassles, we reached kozhikode only at pm, ensuring we had missed the whole function! The cab transport cost us Rs.4825 + Rs.80 (toll), leaving us with 495 rupees compensation per pax. Our issue isn't the financial compensation only, jet airways sent 2 women travellers to unsafe and unknown zone to figure their ways around for no mistake of theirs. Your airlines is a big disappointment! We originally live in dubai and are frequent international and domestic travellers, we have never faced such a taxing situation while travelling with any other airline. Your airlines forced us into an unacceptable situation by all standards and subjected us to emotional and physical harassment. Your staff lacks empathy, all they could do was say "they were sorry". We were told IATA allows the airline to overbook each flight by 5-10%, so they cannot help us at all. This leads to another question, so is IATA to be blamed for this harassment. Mumbai-kozhikode has very few flights and overbooking on such routes is completely obnoxious! Please let us know who can we turn to in such situations. I would be approaching the consumer court and all leading domestic and international newspapers and media channels because this is totally unacceptable. Jet Airways, today has lost us as customers for good. We have attached all proofs for our travel. Kindly also note, our friend who was travelling on same flight that once she explained our situation to certain fellow passengers, they told her if informed or asked they would be willing to give up their seats, which leads us to believe that the airline took no effort to try! "Customer is the king" is the principle that is followed by all service oriented industries but I will not say the same for your airlines. You have Zero customer service. I would rephrase the principle for JetAirways "customer is the donkey"