VASCO: Angry at the inordinate delay of their flight and lack of communication from the airline, around eight passengers alleged abused and manhandled ground-handling airline staff at Dabolim airport on Monday.
According to information, around 160 passengers arrived at Dabolim airport early morning to board a Spice Jet flight (SG 611) to Mumbai, which was supposed to depart at 5.35 am.
“Minutes before the boarding could begin, the flight engineers, while carrying out a routine check of the aircraft, noticed a technical snag. The airline officials declared a few hours delay in the flight departure. As the delay increased, passengers started listing out complaints of missing connecting flights from Mumbai, missing business deals and other issues before the airline staff. A few international passengers, who had connecting international flights, started complaining of their Visa expiring on Monday. Some even demanded a ticket refund. The airline officials kept asking them to be patient, which irked them more,” sources said.
After some hours, few passengers got into a heated argument with the airline staff near the X-ray machine of Spice Jet that is located next to the departure gate. “Around six to eight passengers started creating an unruly scene, and few even manhandled the staff by pushing them, besides abusing them. A passenger even attempted to assault a staff member over the lack of communication on the delay. The situation was brought under control after the intervention of a senior official of Spice Jet,” informed a CISF official who witnessed the incident.
Dabolim Police rushed to the site soon after receiving intimation from CISF officials. However, the policemen were denied entry into the airport by the CISF officials despite the law and order problem.
“We rushed to the site as there were law and order issues at the airport. However, CISF officials denied us entry into the airport and stopped us near the departure gate,” said Ravindra Velip, Dabolim ASI.
When Herald contacted Airport Director K S Rao to seek more details on the brawl and why CISF officials had denied entry to policemen, he stated, “Such incidents are common; passengers sometimes react after their flight gets delayed. Today, few passengers were upset, but the issue was rightly handled by the airline manager. Initially, there was confusion as the airline officials were expecting that the aircraft would be repaired and then it would take the passengers.”
Later, they decided to seek an alternate arrangement as the flight had developed a major technical snag. With regards to the entry of policemen inside the airport, there is no such restriction for the police. We have already issued them a pass and such claims of restricted entry are false.”
