Airlines cancel flights in face of state silence on curb relaxation

Kolkata: With the state maintaining silence over lifting the restrictions on flights from six cities, airlines began cancelling services scheduled on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday in the first week of October.
While IndiGo has scheduled some departures from Delhi and Chennai late on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday — so that they arrive post-midnight and don’t violate the state’s curbs — other airlines have had to cancel flights and work out alternative arrangements for passengers.
Mumbai-based entrepreneur Suman Sen, who was booked on an October 1 Vistara flight to Kolkata received a text late on Tuesday alerting him about the cancellation. “I had called up the airline customer care number earlier in the day, but they had no clue about the cancellation then. But later in the evening, they sent me a text saying Thursday’s flight was cancelled. They rescheduled me on a flight on Friday afternoon, which will leave Mumbai at 3.30pm and reach Kolkata at 6.10pm,” said Sen, a resident of Salt Lake.
TOI had written on Monday that all airlines had opened bookings on all days in October in anticipation that the state may relax the three-days-a-week restriction on direct flights from six cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Nagpur and Pune.