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[p]More than a day after India’s first private airline Jet Airways Ltd announced that it would temporarily cease operations amid a fund crunch, passengers across the globe have been left in the lurch. Selena Lester, 53, a resident of Bushey in England flew to India in the first week of April for a holiday. Lester and her family of three were scheduled to return to London on 21 April but are currently stranded in Goa.[p]
[br][p] “Our JetAirways flight has been cancelled and we’ve been promised a refund but have no idea when it would get credited. I’ve been trawling the internet since Thursday but there are hardly any flights," said Lester on Friday.
The family spent £216 ( ₹19,475) for a ticket when they booked them in May last year. Lester will now have to shell out nearly 15 times as much as fares have shot up to £3,000 ( ₹270,477). “Our insurer will only refund £700 each so it’s a huge loss for us.[p] Air India tweeted saying they want to help the people who are stuck but when you approach them, there’s no response. I checked online, all their flights are fully booked for the next nine days. Our holiday has turned into a nightmare," added Lester. [p] The sudden grounding of Jet Airways has hit budget travellers the most because there is no clarity on when the refund would be processed and there is also a spike in air fares. “The 15-day advance fares have gone up by 5-10% compared to levels last year. The three-day advance fare levels have shot up by 25-30% due to the shrinking capacity on account of Jet Airways grounding as well as peak summer vacation demand," said Sharat Dhall, chief operating officer, Yatra.com, an online travel aggregator.[p][strong]Where are the refunds?[/strong] [p]
[br][p] While some passengers sensed that the problem was going to get bigger even before the Jet Airways grounding announcement came, others who were hoping that things would settle down didn’t cancel their bookings in time. But to their disappointment, the airline started rescheduling and eventually cancelling tickets. Unlike Subramanyam, who got her refund in a couple of days, these passengers are still waiting for their money to come back. [p]Ravi Rajgopalan, 57, has been a Jet platinum member for more than a decade now and hoped that somehow the airline would pull through. So he booked round-trip tickets to London from Mumbai for a trip scheduled in the last week of March. “Later, I felt that my flight would get cancelled because of what was going on, so I called Jet and asked them to cancel my tickets. I received an email saying I’ll get a refund. It was a business class fare worth ₹2.6 lakh. I haven’t got the refund yet," said Rajgopalan.[br] |
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发表于 2019-04-20 16:37:28
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