District consumer forum penalized Air Canada on Wednesday for deficiency in service and causing mental harassment to Sector-43 resident Inderpreet Kaur. The airline was directed to refund Canadian dollars 632.98 to the complainant and pay Rs 5,000 as damages along with Rs 2,000 as cost of litigation as it overcharged for the ticket of her minor son Jaideep.
Their two children were to accompany them. She stated that Jaideep was less than two years old at the time and they paid the fair for ‘infant’ category in his case. As Jaideep’s birthday fell on June 17, he was to become ineligible for the low-price ticket during the trip. Kaur said the travel agency was told about this and the staff there informed her that Jaideep would be allowed to travel on the ticket even after he attained the age of two as the round trip was to begin when he was an infant.

In these recessionary times, airlines globally are operating on half-empty seats. But Air India, which is passing through its worst ever financial crisis, is in fresh trouble for allegedly carrying extra passengers on a fully loaded flight. What adds to the irony is that the excess passengers were discovered in a probe into the aircraft’s door falling apart when it started moving while attached to an aerobridge!
“Of these three, one woman passenger was accommodated in the cockpit and two others on the foldable seats where cabin crew sits during take off and landing,” said sources. The DGCA can now take criminal action against AI for this violation. The cockpits in modern aircraft have three seats. While two are for the pilot and co-pilot, the third is called a jump seat which is usually vacant. Since the process of issuing boarding passes is completely computerized, the system stops generating passes once a flight is full. In this case, however, the probe has found that boarding passes were allegedly issued manually to enable the extra passengers to clear the different levels of pre-embarkation security checks.

This action by the airline was a gross violation of the air safety norms. In this case, the airline was caught because of another incident, and this fact came out during the investigation.

Director general of civil aviation Nasim Zaidi has given all airlines, domestic and international, 30 days to correct their websites, systems and travel agent database so that passengers get a single all-inclusive figure of the total amount payable.
The DGCA circular says airlines must clearly state the all-inclusive fares on their websites, newspapers, office and with the travel agents.

This directive should be helpful to passengers, since they can quickly compare prices, and find the correct price quickly and at one go.

Here to attend a family function at Chandigarh and Amritsar, Dhillon and her husband, Manjinder got two tickets booked from London to Delhi for October 12, 2006 and further tickets were booked in connecting flight from Delhi to Chandigarh. As per the schedule, they reached Heathrow Airport but allegedly ground staff told them that the flight was delayed.
They stayed overnight and reached Delhi on October 14, 2006. The ordeal continued when they arrived at Delhi airport as, allegedly, the ground staff here informed them that the connecting flight from Delhi to Chandigarh was after 12 hours. As the couple had to reach Chandigarh at the earliest, they refused to wait for such a long period. Allegedly Dhillons were sent to Chandigarh by a shared taxi by the ground staff.

This is not an uncommon occurrence to happen, after all the world over have to suffer due to flights getting delayed; and in many cases, this could be due to technical snags or similar issues that can cause legitimate delays, although passengers do get inconvenienced. However, in this case, the airline did not present any proof of technical problems or something similar, which could mean that the flight delay could have been for other reasons that were not of a technical nature. If true, such things need to be penalized.