Cancellations add to flyers’ woes at Chennai airport

Chennai airport handled only 19 departures and 17 arrivals on Monday

Twenty-one-year-old Aditya Kunwar Singh, an engineering student, had booked a ticket for a flight from Chennai to Gorakhpur via Hyderabad for ₹12,500.

The flight was scheduled to depart at 8 p.m. on Monday.

However, at 6 a.m., he received a call from the airline, informing him that the flight had been cancelled. “Now, I don’t have any money left, and don’t know how I will be able to get back home,” he said.

Around 100 incoming and outgoing flights were cancelled at the last minute on Monday, leaving scores of passengers fuming.

Around 9.30 p.m. on Sunday, the State government had announced the resumption of domestic flights. However, arrivals were capped at 25 a day.

D. Sudhakara Reddy of Air Passengers Association of India (APAI) said, there was utter confusion as many flights were cancelled across the country and passengers went through a stressful time.

Lack of coordination

“Many of them went to the airport in cities like Delhi paying a huge sum for transport and ended up at the airport not knowing in the end that the flights were cancelled. There should be better coordination between State and Centre. If it had happened, passengers would not have gone through this kind of problems.”

Hari, a 30-year-old working professional, said that his flight to Mumbai was cancelled.

“Yesterday, each State came out with one plan. Wouldn’t it have been better if the Centre and the States coordinated with each other and brought out this announcement a few days earlier, when the Ministry of Civil Aviation announced that flight services will resume? Now, thousands of passengers like me have been left to suffer,” he added.

Passengers have been desperately trying to reach the airlines’ customer care representatives to ascertain the status of their flights.