An IndiGo passenger, who travelled from Madurai to Pune on May 4, has claimed that his baggage had been damaged in transit and his belongings had been stolen. No compensation, however, had been provided by the airline, he complained.
Ram Mudaliar, a resident of Poland, who flew down from Madurai to Pune on May 4, has claimed that his check-in baggage was found to be damaged when he received it on his arrival at the Pune airport. He also added that some items from the baggage were missing.
“It is difficult to pinpoint what stuff was stolen as we were carrying around six to seven bags. However, at that moment we can zero in only on the European chocolates that we were carrying for my five nieces and nephews in Pune,” Mudaliar said.
The distressed passenger, who approached the ground staff with the issue, was asked to send an email to the airline’s customer care and was told that no complaint registration procedure was required at the airport.
The passenger thereafter took to Twitter to express his resentment with regard to the issue at hand, wherein the IndiGo officials claimed that all cases of mishandled baggage need to be reported at the destination airport so that airline officials could further assist the passengers. Also, the airlines requested some time to get the matter checked.
On a Twitter thread dated May 11, Mudaliar tweeted several times to the airlines following up on the customer compensation. He, however, did not hear anything else from the airlines.
An IndiGo spokesperson on being contacted said, “Our ground staff and officials are in continuous touch with the passenger and have also offered to repair the damage done. It is usual for such things to happen. Maybe there was a problem with the baggage that led to its wearing out and the chocolates could have slipped out from that tear in the baggage.”
“After receiving the complaint mail from the passenger, timely response was shared followed by thorough investigation. However, as per the official airport CCTV footage no suspicious activity was recorded,” the official further added.
On contacting a ground staff member at Pune Airport, Mirror was told, “We usually give the passengers the customer care ID where they can write about their complaints and do not take down any formal complaints here. I have not been in touch with Mudaliar after that day, he did take down my number but we did not have any conversation. I am not sure if any other member from the ground staff is in touch with him.”
The customer service desk official said, “Yes, we have received a complaint from Mudaliar and we called him once, but his phone was switched off at that time.”
Mudaliar, however, said that the officials’ reactions to the theft were such that this seemed a regular phenomenon. Also, there has been no accountability or the effort to resolve the matter.
