A private airline almost crash-landed a wedding on Sunday, cancelling a flight that was to carry the groom and 99 family members and friends to Delhi hours before the scheduled take-off from Calcutta airport.
Lake Town-based IT professional Saurav Rathi, 30, did make it to his wedding on a Jet Airways flight and exchanged vows with banker Pallavi Tyagi at Greater Noida in the evening, but 33 members of the groom’s party were left all dressed up and nowhere to go.
The Rathi family had booked 100 tickets on SpiceJet’s SG 606 over two months in advance, little knowing that the budget airline would cancel the flight on the day of the journey and then plead its inability to make alternative arrangements.
“We came to know about the flight being cancelled around 7am, just when all of us were preparing to leave for the airport. The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘Oh! I won’t be able to make it to my wedding’,” Saurav told Metro.
The airline cited “technical reasons” for cancelling flight SG 606 — it was scheduled to take off at noon and reach Delhi at 2.15pm — in a bulk SMS sent to all passengers exactly five hours prior to take-off.
As the Rathi household plunged into despair, Saurav and some family members scrambled to find alternatives. “SpiceJet initially refused to put us on another flight. After much pleading, 33 seats were arranged on a Jet Airways flight. Airline officials told us that this was the best they could do,” Saurav said.
By then, mother Sarita was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. At Sarojini Nagar in Delhi, members of the bride’s family would reach for their phones every few minutes to enquire whether the wedding was on.
“They were all as tense as we were. They wanted to be sure the groom would be able to make it to the mandap on time,” said a family member.
After much running around, the Rathi family found 29 seats on an Air India flight in the afternoon at fares more than double of what they had booked the SpiceJet tickets for. “Five of my closest friends were rebooked on a SpiceJet flight in the evening, which meant they would miss the wedding even if they made it to Delhi,” the groom said.
For Saurav, the tension didn’t end there. The Jet Airways flight that was to be his wedding lifeline almost got cancelled by the time he reached the airport with his family.
“We had rushed to the airport after being informed that the flight was scheduled to take off at 8.45am, only to realise that our ordeal was far from over. A technical snag apparently forced the airline to replace the aircraft and our flight finally took off around 12.30pm. Saurav was the most relieved man on the flight,” a friend said over phone during the two-hour drive from the airport to the wedding venue in Greater Noida.
The groom’s father, leather exporter H.N. Rathi, said he would seek compensation from SpiceJet. “We had to pay more than double for each seat on the Air India flight since those were last-minute bookings,” he added.
07/03/11 Sanjay Mandal/Telegraph
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