Adampur-Mumbai Indigo mess: Told to rush to Amritsar airport abruptly, passengers return after endless dilly-dallying

Passengers, who were to board an Indigo flight from Adampur to Mumbai at 4 pm on Wednesday evening, were a harassed lot as the airline authorities informed them just an hour ahead of their flight that there would be no take-off from here and they should reach Amritsar for the 10 pm flight. To their dismay, the officials kept on delaying the flight from Amritsar too till 11 am on Thursday.

Fed up, a majority of the passengers chose to return back to Jalandhar thereafter. They said they came to know that the flight was now scheduled to take off at 4:30 pm today.

Amit Jaggi, a resident of Jalandhar, said, "I was to go on a business trip to Mumbai and my flight was to take off at 4 pm on Wednesday. I got a message from the airlines just an hour ahead of the take off to reach Amritsar as our flight had been scheduled to take off from Amritsar at 10 pm. I started from here to reach Amritsar airport at 8 pm. When I reached there, I got a message that the flight had got delayed and it would now take off at 11:30 pm. The management kept delaying the flight thereafter, from 11:30 pm to 12:50 am and then further to 2:20 am, 4:30 am, 6:30 am and then 9:30 am. I remained awake the whole night and finally returned to Jalandhar at 11 am, still getting no conclusive answer whether the flight would ultimately take off or not. The airlines staff was so non-cooperative. They did not even give us any reason about the delay. I have been taking flights for the past 35 years but have never had such an awful experience."

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Another Jalandhar-based businessman Ashish Bahri, who too had to go to Mumbai on a business trip from Adampur, said he took a cab at the last minute to reach Amritsar to catch the flight on Wednesday. “I got my hotel bookings done accordingly as I was to reach there by 7 pm. It was so wrong on the part of the airlines to keep us waiting for over 18 hours. If there was some glitch, we should have been informed well in time and not made to stay awake at the aipoirt the whole night. All other flights, including Air India, were going to Mumbai. It was just the Indigo flights that were not taking off. I lost my patience around 10 am and chose to finally return to Jalandhar.”

Both these passengers witnessed unruly scenes at the airport due to this delay. "The staff was not ready to talk to anyone and answer the queries. CISF personnel had to intervene several times," he said.