4 years on, stranded flier gets Rs 35,000

Mumbai: Nearly four years after Ketan Ashar was stranded for eight hours inside a London-bound plane at the city airport, the consumer court’s recent order, directing the private carrier to pay him Rs35,000 as compensation, has offered him some respite. The Mumbai District Suburban Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum recently directed the Jet Airways (India) Ltd. to pay Rs30,000 towards compensation to the Worli resident whose flight was delayed for at least eight hours due to a technical snag. Besides, Ashar will also get additional Rs5,000 incurred towards litigation.
Jet Airways, however, did not respond to repeated calls seeking their comment on the consumer forum order.
Ashar boarded a flight, which was to take off at 2.30am on October 31, 2007, but the flight was aborted soon after, as the pilots noticed the plane was not attaining expected speed due to some technical glitch. Engineers were called in. They took nearly eight hours rectify the problem, following, which the flight finally took off next day at 10.30am — almost eight hours after its scheduled departure.
Ashar moved the consumer forum in April 2008 alleging that passengers were made to remain seated inside the plane for almost eight hours and that too without any food and water. In his plea, Ashar sought a compensation of Rs50,762 from the airlines, stating he had incurred a loss of Rs25,762, which he paid for hotel reservation and local transport in London.
26/05/11 Kanchan Chaudhari/ Hindustan Times

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Categories: Airports May 2011, Jet Airways May 2011