The next time you get dropped off at the airport tell your driver to wait till you’ve got a boarding pass. For, a ticket you had bought from an airline counter weeks before the flight may not be good enough. This is what Mumbai-based Swapnesh Mehta learnt the hard way on Sunday morning. The lesson caused him a day’s delay and cost him Rs 39,000 for three fresh tickets. He had bought the original tickets for Rs 14,625 on August 29 at Mumbai airport.

Swapnesh, 34, arrived with his wife Sejal and son Smit at the check-in-counter of SpiceJet at Calcutta airport around 6.50am. Their flight to Mumbai was scheduled for 8.10am.

But the Mehtas were denied boarding passes by officials of the low-cost carrier who claimed that the tickets booked through their call centre had not been paid for.

Swapnesh had paid the full amount of Rs 14,625 at the airline’s counter in Mumbai two months ago, a confirmation of which was embossed on his e-ticket. But his argument cut no ice with those manning the SpiceJet counters as there was no record of payment in their online system.

Desperate to return to Mumbai — “my son, who is in Class II , has an exam on Monday” — Swapnesh tried his best to convince the airline officials but failed and the flight left without the family of three.

Not carrying enough cash to pay for three fresh tickets — he does not use a credit card “on principle” — Swapnesh had to dial a friend to bail him out. Three new tickets for the SpiceJet flight on Monday morning were bought for Rs 39,000 and the family was forced to check into a hotel near the airport.

Swapnesh later lodged a complaint with the airport police station and also with the airport.

“We are probing his allegation and have asked our Mumbai office to look into it. But in our system, the tickets were ‘on hold’, which means that the payment was not made,” said a SpiceJet official.

Swapnesh had called SpiceJet’s call centre on August 28 and used the time limit booking system by which a passenger can book the ticket and pay the fare within a stipulated period, usually between 24 and 48 hours. If the payment is not made by then, the booking is cancelled automatically.

“I was asked to pay the fare within 24 hours and so the next morning I went to the airport counter of SpiceJet and paid Rs 14,625,” said Swapnesh.

But when he received a copy of his e-ticket, he found a line saying payment was due. “I immediately pointed this out and the person behind the counter admitted to the mistake, stamped the ticket confirming payment and signed on it,” said Swapnesh.

The Mehtas arrived in Calcutta on October 24 and will be leaving on a bitter note after a trip to Darjeeling and Sikkim. “I had booked the tickets in August to get a low rate but now I had to shell out almost thrice that amount,” complained Swapnesh.

According to travel industry sources, the trend of steep air fares close to the date of journey is here to stay. “The number of low-fare seats has been reduced drastically by airlines because of the recent turmoil in the industry. Low fares are available only for a few days after booking opens and then the ticket prices of even low-cost carriers rise sharply,” said a tour operator.

source: The Telegraph

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