AI asked to pay 1 lakh for wrong boarding pass info

Thiruvananthapuram: District consumer disputes redressal commission here has ordered Air India to pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation to a passenger on a complaint that he missed a Mumbai-Thiruvananthapuram flight after the passenger was misinformed about the flight schedule.
Under section 12 of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, the complainant R Gopikrishnan Kottoor held before the commission that he had booked a flight ticket in Air India AI-630 from Nagpur to Mumbai on March 8, 2014, reaching Mumbai at 10:10 pm, followed by a connecting flight from Mumbai to Trivandrum in AI-667 at 6:30 hours on March 9, 2014. The time indicated on the boarding pass was 7:30am. The boarding pass was issued from the Air India ticket counter in Nagpur. On March 9, at around 6:10am the complainant underwent a security check. When he reached the boarding gate, it was closed as the flight had already left. He was later given a circuitous flight with an extended layover of over 10 hours.
AI argued before the commission that there was no deficiency of service as the departure time was clearly mentioned in the ticket as 6:30am. The first document for getting prepared for a journey is a ticket. It was strange that the complainant did not verify the departure time even as he reached Mumbai the previous night. Since the passenger did not turn up on time, the airline staff tried to contact him over phone and made a verbal announcement at the boarding gate. The gate was closed at 6:20 hours. The boarding time was printed as 7:30am owing to some error in the computer system in Nagpur, it said.
The commission said the deficiency of service from the part of the airlines was evident and hence it should pay Rs 1 lakh as compensation for the mental agony suffered by the complaint and Rs 2,500 towards the cost of the proceedings. The commission issued the orders in this regard on Tuesday.