In general compartments of a train or a bus, one needs to block a seat by standing hours in queue before departure. First come, first serve; fair enough. But never thought one needs to do that even for confirmed tickets in a flight !!
I had a vague idea that this can happen, but never thought about it seriously since it never happened to me or anyone I know.
I had a confirmed ticket in my indigo flight (8E-829) yesterday (3 Nov) and I was in the check-in queue one hour before the scheduled time. All set I guess, but I had a rude shock when I was denied a seat since the flight was already full.
The catch was that we had 2 separate PNRs (one for my wife and daughter and other for myself). They checked in my wife and daughter and run out of seats for my ticket. We were told we need to travel separately !!
There are multiple things wrong here. First, the flight being overbooked is not passenger's fault. Second, the decision to travel in an alternate flight is at passenger's discretion. Whatever algorithm or data science Indigo is following is not ethical to customers.
I had read about it earlier but getting denied a seat even after having confirmed ticket was a shock to me, I didn't know how to react. I had to travel in the same flight because of my own reasons, so I insisted and held my ground in front of the crew. After a lot of uncertain ifs and buts, I got a seat due to some other passenger cancelling his travel voluntarily.
In the heat of the moment, I forgot to thank an indigo crew member who went out of his way calling multiple people and accommodating a seat for me in the flight. Thank you Mohammed Salman (sorry if I am misspelling your name). I really apperciate your effort and handling of the passengers (there were at least 4-5 more behind me who were denied boarding !!)
I do not blame the crew for this, it is airlines fault. I have traveled Indigo multiple times and the experience has always been good. But this has left really bad impression. I guess this is the other side of Indigo's award winning services.
Anyway, I think there are few lessons here
For Indigo :
I had a vague idea that this can happen, but never thought about it seriously since it never happened to me or anyone I know.
I had a confirmed ticket in my indigo flight (8E-829) yesterday (3 Nov) and I was in the check-in queue one hour before the scheduled time. All set I guess, but I had a rude shock when I was denied a seat since the flight was already full.
The catch was that we had 2 separate PNRs (one for my wife and daughter and other for myself). They checked in my wife and daughter and run out of seats for my ticket. We were told we need to travel separately !!
There are multiple things wrong here. First, the flight being overbooked is not passenger's fault. Second, the decision to travel in an alternate flight is at passenger's discretion. Whatever algorithm or data science Indigo is following is not ethical to customers.
I had read about it earlier but getting denied a seat even after having confirmed ticket was a shock to me, I didn't know how to react. I had to travel in the same flight because of my own reasons, so I insisted and held my ground in front of the crew. After a lot of uncertain ifs and buts, I got a seat due to some other passenger cancelling his travel voluntarily.
In the heat of the moment, I forgot to thank an indigo crew member who went out of his way calling multiple people and accommodating a seat for me in the flight. Thank you Mohammed Salman (sorry if I am misspelling your name). I really apperciate your effort and handling of the passengers (there were at least 4-5 more behind me who were denied boarding !!)
I do not blame the crew for this, it is airlines fault. I have traveled Indigo multiple times and the experience has always been good. But this has left really bad impression. I guess this is the other side of Indigo's award winning services.
Anyway, I think there are few lessons here
For Indigo :
- Stop overbooking. Put the passengers in standby if you are overbooked so that they are ready for this surprise.
- Some of the crew started arguing that we were late. We were close but yet well within 45 minutes before departure. And my wife and daughter got checked in at the same time btw. Doing this to your customers so that you save some money for your airline ?
- Always web checkin. I didn't do it because I was not getting seats together in web-checkin. But at-least I would have got a seat. Anyway, this will just shift the queue online from the counter. You have to rely on others to be lazy (:P)
- Arrive hours before the flight, sleep in airport if you want.
- Pray.
