When even minor delays upset plans

There have been quite a few instances of passengers being denied boarding passes despite being only slightly late —Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

On 23 March, 20-year-old Ankit Khanna finished his college exam and rushed to Chennai airport to catch an Air India flight to New Delhi for a job interview. When Mr. Khanna reached the airline counter, the staff denied him the boarding card on the pretext that the counters were closed, his mother Nalini Khanna claims.

She said, “The flight’s scheduled departure was at 10.45 a.m. and he had reached the counter by 9.50 a.m. He stood in the queue to check-in for 25 minutes after which they directed him to another counter and he was subsequently denied boarding. Finally, he was forced to buy another ticket for an evening flight. It was an agonising experience.”

This is not a one-off case. Another passenger Srijit Maiti, a 37-year-old professional, was denied a boarding card at Hyderabad airport on Monday. “My Air India flight to Mumbai was scheduled to leave Hyderabad at 6.20 a.m. and I arrived by 5.35 a.m. at the check-in counter. Even after a protracted argument, they refused to let me in. I bought another ticket for Rs. 9,000 and flew a little later. I will never fly by Air India again,” he said.

Sometime back, a video of Air India staff denying boarding cards to passengers had gone viral on social media.

Most airlines close their check-in counters 45 minutes before domestic flights and 60 minutes before international ones.

While passengers say traffic jams and other emergencies push them to land up a little late to airport, airlines say allowing passengers till the last minute will certainly lead to flights getting delayed.

“In both cases, the passengers arrived well past their reporting time. How can we let them in? The staff also have a host of jobs to do including the preparation of the passenger manifest,” the airline official said.

In some cases, passengers allege they were denied the boarding pass since the flight was overbooked. DMK MLA T.R.B. Raja alleged though he arrived well ahead of deadline at Chennai airport to catch a flight to Tiruchi, Jet Airways denied him the boarding card since the flight was overbooked. “I had to then drive down to the city, but I missed that meeting. The airline compensated me Rs. 2,000 and said I could instead fly on another day,” he said.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has said the flights are allowed to overbook to a limited extent, but sometimes, the calculations of airlines can go wrong, another airline official said. “If that happens, then as instructed by DGCA, we provide compensation,” the official said.