Team Herald
VASCO: Panic gripped flyers at Dabolim International Airport on Monday as hundreds who were scheduled to board afternoon flights from Goa, many after a wonderful vacation, missed their flights and remained stranded at the airport.
Similarly several tourists who arrived in Goa and eager to reach their hotels in north Goa had to take a circuitous route to reach to the coastal belt.
There was chaos at the Dabolim airport after several departing passengers reached at the airport and found they missed their flights. There were also emotional scenes as passengers were seen in tears after they missed their flights due to traffic blockade at Panjim by protestors.
“My wife and I had come down to Goa for a vacation and were supposed to board the 3.25 pm Indigo flight to Lucknow. However, when we reached the airport we were shocked to note that we had missed our flight, as we had arrived late. We have checked-out of our hotel and the next flight is eight hours later, so we are stranded here with no other option,” Manjeet Singh, a domestic tourist from Lucknow, said.
He added that they had left the hotel at 10.30 am and reached the airport after five hours, that too by taking several internal village routes. “We understand that people are agitating to highlight their issues but at the same time they should understand that Goa is a tourist destination and tourists come to enjoy and not to face such unwarranted inconvenience,” he added.
It was a similar case with Vandana Srivastava from Delhi, another domestic tourist. “I had to perform a surgery in the evening in Delhi but we got stuck in the traffic jam for over two hours and missed our flight, now we are stranded here through no fault of ours.”
Software engineer Kirti Sharma from Delhi, who reached the airport just in time thanked the taxi driver for his efforts. “There were no police or anyone else to guide tourists on how to reach the airport using other roads. In fact, it was only due to our taxi driver that we were able to reach the airport in time, he said.
Many stranded passengers who missed their flights were accommodated by airline companies in their next flights. Some passengers were even given full refund and over a dozen flights from Goa airport departed with delays of 15 to 25 minutes to accommodate passengers arriving late due to traffic blockade in Panjim.
United Taximen Union president Sanjay Naik said: “In fact, 80 per cent of our guests had their hotel bookings in North Goa and since there was traffic blockade in Panjim till later afternoon we did not refuse any bookings but informed them that we would be drop them by taking the Sanquelim route for which extra amount was charged,” he said.
