Pune: Over 300 flyers travelling to and from Dubai on SpiceJet flights experienced hours of confusion and chaos at both the airports (Pune and Dubai) on Friday evening. Dubai resident Prasad Datar’s family was to go there from the city on the airline’s flight (SG-51), scheduled to take off at 8.50pm.
“All passengers were initially told that the flight was delayed by around half-an-hour, but the boarding never happened. Around 1am on Saturday, the airline’s staff announced that the flight had been cancelled,” Datar told TOI. Ordeal of his family members and other passengers did not end there.
“It took passengers almost an hour-and-a half to get the immigration cancelled and another hour to get the luggage back. My family got out of the airport around 3am and went back home. They started for Mumbai on Saturday morning to take a flight from there to Dubai in the afternoon hours.
The airline’s staffers were completely clueless most of the time,” Datar said. The same aircraft was scheduled to fly back to Pune after landing in Dubai. It was also cancelled.
Amit Koik, one of the flyers booked on it, was coming to the city to attend a family programme. He said, “The flight from Dubai to Pune was scheduled at 12.05am.
We received a text message stating that it was delayed by an hour. After we reached the Dubai airport and completed the formalities, an airline staff member said the flight might be cancelled. The staffer said I could be adjusted on a flight from Dubai to Mumbai, supposed to take off at 11.
30pm.” Koik agreed and, after the completion of all formalities, reached the boarding gate to find that the same flight’s destination was changed to Pune because of few flyers to Mumbai. “This resulted in Mumbai flyers getting agitated.
The flight took off at around 1am. After reaching Pune, I was told that my luggage had not arrived,” he said. The airline’s spokesperson was sent a query about the flyers’ ordeal.
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