Air India refunds airfare to the passengers of goofed-up August 27 India-to-Korea flight

EXCLUSIVE ACN IMPACT:

NEW DELHI: Facing the flak from the flyers from across the world for not returning the airfares amounting to hundreds of crores of Rupees against ticket cancellations during and after lockdown period, India’s national carrier Air India has a set an example of sorts in South Korea.

The cash strapped and state-owned airline company recently refunded the airfare to almost all the passengers for its August 27 New Delhi – Incheon (Korea) flight, and that too within a few days.

The flyers including women and children of this goofed-up flight had met the nightmare of their life when they were denied to board the flight moments before it was scheduled to take off for Korea from IGI Airport around midnight.

Asian Community News (ACN) Network had taken up the cause of the disgruntled passengers – all Indians from across the country, and published related news “Air India Fiasco: An Addled Diplomacy, A Goof up Airline, and Stranded Indians”, which was read across the world especially in countries like India, USA, Canada, UAE, Australia, and others, and moved the Air India to refund airfare to affected passengers. It was the impact of this news that Air India acted swiftly, admitted the goof-up it created and returned the money to the passengers.

According to sources all airlines including Air India owe over Rs. 3000 crores to the flyers who were issued credit shells against tickets canceled for flights during and after the national lockdown. They have been waiting for a refund for over six months.

This information about Air India returning the airfare to India-Korea passengers of the August 27 flight came to the fore recently when a South Korea-based Indian scientist Dr. Mohammad Hassan Baig moved the Indian government seeking the return of airfare money back to the Indian passengers of canceled tickets of India-Korea flight service of Air India.

He worked hard to accumulate the details of the affected passengers through Facebook posts, made a detailed list, and wrote to top-notch Indian officials including Hardeep S Puri, Civil Aviation Minister; Rajiv Bansal, Air India CMD, as well as Satish A Gokhale, Country Manager-Korea at Air India’s  Seoul.

“The Air India office at Seoul was quick to respond. In a communication, Satish A Gokhale, Country Manager-Korea informed that out of the list shared to us almost 64 tickets had been refunded. He stated that there were only 03 cases pertaining to INCHEON station out of which one is refunded and the remaining 02 will be processed in due course of time. For the remaining tickets we suggest that individual passenger has to first apply with Air India or the Travel agent from where ever they may have done their ticketing and accordingly the refund will be actioned,” said Dr. Baig, a Scientist at Yonsei University College of Medicine, and recently he was a recipient of the Young Investigator Research award for his research on Covid-19 by the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Dr. Baig who is very actively involved in the Indian community matters in Korea said Seoul’s Air India office also provided the email address of Air India and the respective travel agents for the perusal of the individual passengers.

Seoul’s Air India office was also generous enough for admitting its mistake on August 27.

“Once again on behalf of Air India Seoul South Korea we apologies for all the inconvenience caused to you and your community members,” wrote the Air India office in its email.

According to Dr. Baig, due to uncertainties surrounding Air India regarding its acquisition/ halting operation, people are apprehensive about their money.

“There are many people who are waiting for their refunds since March. It has well been half a year. There are many people who took their tickets from other private platforms like Make My Trip etc. Upon their inquiry, Air India directs them towards the ticketing platform and ticketing platforms ask the passengers to contact Air India. This has been happening since last many months with many passengers,” Dr. Baig added.

He has compiled the list of more than 150 more passengers who have been awaiting the return of their airfare for over six months and shared the same with Air India.

In his letter to the India Aviation Minister Hardeep S Puri, Dr. Baig stated, “I am writing to you in connection with the Air India flights which were booked during the last several months and were canceled during this pandemic. During these last several months, Several NRI’s in South Korea booked their tickets with Air India to travel from Delhi-Incheon, South Korea (along with domestic connecting flights of air India) and they couldn’t travel due to the reasons like lockdown, seats not being allotted after payment and visa restriction imposed by the Korean government due to COVID-19. In all of the above cases, the passengers haven’t been refunded the airfare amount to date.”

This has, however, caused a great deal of trouble and vexation to the passengers who had booked their tickets and haven’t got the refund and also that no time limit has been provided to the passenger for the refund is causing distress and hardships for the passengers.

Many of the passengers who have to book another ticket to enter South Korea via another country do not have enough money to buy the tickets now; they mainly include students and families of three or four people who have to travel to South Korea. Other passengers whose flights were canceled due to COVID-19 led travel restrictions are also waiting for the refund of the airfare amount. Many passengers are not even being provided with proper information regarding the refund of the airfare even after consultations with the customer care executive of Air India.

“In order to get our grievances addressed, with a small group of NRIs living in South Korea, we have collected the list of passengers whose airfares have still not been refunded. To our surprise, we found that there are passengers who are waiting for their refunds since early March 2020, in which case it has already been more than six months (roughly 180 days) and the refunds have still not been made. This has not only raised concerns among the passengers about their refund amount, who booked their tickets between March and August 2020 but also about the professional ethics and the integrity of Air India towards its customers,” Dr. Baig wrote.

However, Dr. Baig is also one of those thousands of flyers whose Air India flight had got canceled due to a COVID-induced pandemic and subsequent lockdown in April. And he too has not received the airfare refund so far.

“I was having my Air India flight ticket from DEL-ICN on 17th April 2020, but due to the pandemic, our flight got canceled. Since then I was waiting for a refund. A few days back, I noticed there were several other people who were facing the same issue. So, I made up my mind to take an initiative to try for their refund process as well. I communicated with Indians in Korea via a FB group post. Then I collected the information (Just ticket number, name, and email) of all the people seeking refunds and initiated the process,” Dr. Baig disclosed to ACN Network.

Also read: Air India Fiasco: An Addled Diplomacy, A Goof up Airline, and Stranded Indians