A petition moved before the Delhi High Court on Monday has sought direction to the Centre and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to ensure refund or alternative mode of travel to passengers who had booked tickets with Jet Airways.

The plea said the sudden suspension of all domestic and international flights of Jet Airways has resulted in a major crisis for the passengers who were not informed about it earlier.

Activist Bejon Kumar Misra, in his application, sought direction to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the DGCA to adopt prompt redressal mechanism for all affected passengers to access full refund of air tickets with reasonable compensation or arrange alternative mode of travel for them to reach their destination.

“It is common knowledge that all competitor airlines have exorbitantly increased their airfares and the toothless and vulnerable consumers are constrained to suffer not only in terms of money, but also in terms of mental harassment of unprecedented scale,” the plea said.

“The passengers have to not only purchase alternative tickets at highly exorbitant cost, but also go through lots of anxieties and mental agony. This has resulted in profiteering by other airlines at the cost of the passengers and till date no relief has been announced by the respondents [Centre and DGCA],” it added.

“It is submitted that as per the report available in the public domain, approximately ₹360 crore of the passengers/consumers hard earned money are under threat due to non-refund of the ticket value,” it said.