Days after Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal unearthed a major ticketing lapse, Air India suspended two officials saying "negligence" by its customer service staff resulted in a domestic flight operating with 23 empty seats even when there was a wait-list for the flight.
The airline initiated an internal probe after Venugopal, who was on board a Delhi-Kochi-Thiruvananthapuram flight on January 4, saw 23 vacant seats inside while a Kerala minister was denied a seat on grounds of "non-availability". The junior minister promptly asked Air India to probe the matter. Following the directive, the airline launched the inquiry and suspended two officials of the customer service department pending its completion.
The probe found that two groups of passengers were supposed to travel by that flight as per the 'summary sheet'. However, one of these groups had not been ticketed though PNR (Passenger Name Record) numbers were issued to them, airline officials said.
14/01/13 PTI/moneycontrol.com
