Friday, November 12, 2021

Booked wheelchair missing, 85-year-old flyer brought into Pune airport on baggage trolley

Pune: Unable to find a wheelchair despite booking it two months in advance, an 85-year-old woman travelling from Pune to Delhi had to be ferried on a baggage trolley till the departure gate of the airport here to make it in time for the flight on Wednesday.

Sumit Matoo posted a picture on social media of his grandmother, Jagat Rani Koul, on the trolley on Wednesday. Tagging the airline, IndiGo, Matoo wrote that his grandmother had to wait for over an hour before being taken inside on the trolley, and that the airline said it had only three wheelchairs for passengers flying out.

Speaking to TOI on Thursday, Matoo said his relatives were travelling from Pune to Delhi and then to Jammu. “What happened was embarrassing and insulting. We had booked the tickets two months in advance and opted for wheelchair assistance for my grandmother as she is old and cannot walk,” he said.

The flight was set to take off at 1.20pm and Matoo’s family reached the airport around 11am. “At the IndiGo counter, my relatives asked for a wheelchair and were told to wait for 15 minutes. This stretched for nearly an hour,” he said.

With about an hour to go, the family found that no one at the IndiGo counter could give any satisfactory answers regarding the wheelchair. “An airline staffer said that if my grandmother could walk, she should. Ultimately, my relatives had no option but to get her to sit over some luggage on the baggage trolley and wheeled her till the departure gate. There, a CISF officer arranged for a wheelchair,” he said.

12/11/21 Joy Sengupta/Times of India

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