Jet Airways apologises for overbooking 17 extra passengers, flight delay

A day after a Mumbai-Bhopal Jet Airways flight was delayed by almost two hours due to overbooking of seventeen extra passengers, the national carrier has issued a clarification and an apology on the same.

The statement clarified that due to overbooking a technical glitch occurred in the flight, denying boarding for some confirmed passengers. The offloaded guests refused to accept the airline's offer of compensation/ re-accommodation on other flights, and proceeded towards the flight. This forced intervention of law enforcement officials leading the flight to be delayed by 90 minutes. "Subsequently, all the offloaded guests were duly compensated as per DGCA guidelines and the technical glitch identified and corrected for subsequent bookings," mentioned Jet Airways statement.

One of the passengers, Gurpreet termed it as "unprofessional behaviour" and has decided to file a complaint against the carrier in the consumer court. "The Jet Airways could have easily managed the situation, but what they did was absolutely unprofessional. There was loss of time and other things as well. We are going to file complaint against it in the consumer court." she said. Kamaljeet Kaur Kumar, another passenger, was of the view that stringent action should be taken against the airlines for behaving unethically.

She said, "What we fail to understand is that why did they book seventeen extra tickets. We felt as if we are travelling in a mini-bus. People spend so much on airline fares only to save time, but it was such a loss for us, both in terms of money and time." As per reports, the Mumbai-Bhopal Jet Airways flight was delayed for almost 2 hours due to the overbooking of seventeen passengers, who intimidated staffers by using their political contact if they did not let them board the flight. The group comprised 80 people, who were heading to a marriage, out of which seventeen went on to board this flight.