Flyers stage stir at Agartala airport

Agartala: The number of policemen deployed at the Aagartala airport has been increased to control agitated travellers following cancellation of four SpiceJet flights on Tuesday.
Aggrieved passengers continued their protest on Wednesday demanding compensation due to last-minute cancellations and immediate resumption of flight services.
DSP (Central) Rajendra Datta said 300 outbound passengers with confirmed tickets of SpiceJet assembled at the airport on Tuesday morning.Initially, there were announcements regarding flights being delayed.
However, the passengers started protesting after the airlines announced that all flights to Guwahati and Kolkata have been cancelled. The passengers demanded accommodation in other flights.
However, SpiceJet employees said that was not possible and the airlines was not in a position to run additional flights.
After this, the employees allegedly left the spot to avoid trouble.
The passengers staged a sit-in at the lounge and CISF personnel failed to control the situation.
A police team, led by DSP Datta, reached the airport and registered complaints of the passengers against the local manager of the airlines.
“We detained the SpiceJet manager from his Agartala house at night and brought him to the airport around 10.30 pm. We finally managed to bring the situation under control,” said Datta.
Sources said the aggrieved passengers again assembled at the airport but security personnel stopped them from getting in.
The passengers alleged that besides children and women, 11 patients were stranded.
Many of them had booked air and train tickets for other destinations for onward journey, which had to be cancelled.
“I had a trip down south. and had bought six tickets to Kolkata two months ago. Since we could not reach Kolkata on time, I lost about Rs 1.5 lakh that I had paid to a travel agent,” said Kamalesh Das, a government employee.