Poor communication leaves passengers ‘lost’ at Pune airport

The stranded passengers leaving Pune’s Lohegaon airport on Tuesday evening had a harrowing time following the disruption of flights.

The counters of different airlines teemed with passengers enquiring the status of flights. Some of them even cancelled their tickets.

These hapless and aggrieved passengers questioned why the airlines failed to inform when they asked them before checking out of their hotels and homes.

Speaking to DNA, an aggrieved businessman, Arvind Sud, said there is no communication on behalf of Jet Airways about the postponement of Pune-Delhi flight.

“The take-off time of the flight was 7.10 pm but there was no communication through cellphone, message or anything. I was even told that the flight is on time, so I checked out of my hotel and now stranded at the airport,” Sud said.

Echoing similar views, Ayush Agarwal, who was also supposed to travel by the same flight, said that had he been correctly informed, he would not have checked out of his hotel.

An engineer, Mahesh Babu, cancelled his Pune-Chennai Kingfisher flight ticket as there was no certainty when the flights would resume.

Visibly fed up, Bangalore-bound Kingfisher flight passenger K Chandrashekhar said, “The flight time was 6.55 pm, but we do not know when the flight will take off and we even do not know when it is rescheduled.”

According to some airport officials, it is up to individual airlines to deal with such situations.

“On our part we had immediately alerted the different airlines as soon as the Indian Air Force authorities informed us about the problems in the approach lights at the runway and taxiway,” the sources said.