Full refund, free meal for delayed flights & more; Govt passes new passenger rules
NATIONAL | March 1, 2019:
If your domestic flight is delayed by six hours or more, then the airline should inform you a day in advance and offer you an alternative
alternate flight or a full ticket refund.
If the airline has cancelled your flight and has failed to inform you or you have missed a connecting flight because the airline's earlier flight wasn't on time, then you could get a compensation of Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 depending on travel time or one-way base fare plus fuel charge, whichever is less.
These and other provisions formed the passenger rights charter released
by the ministry of civil aviation ministry on Wednesday, after about nine
months of consultation with airlines.
If you're at the airport and the flight is delayed by 2-6 hours (depending on the travel time), the airline needs to offer you free meals and refreshments. For delays more than six hours for flights scheduled between 8pm and 3am and a delay of over 24 hours for other flights, airlines should inform passengers a day in advance and also offer them free hotel accommodation, the charter said.
That would be of hardly any solace to a passenger who has booked an international holiday.
If the airline has informed you about a flight cancellation less than two weeks and more than 24 hours in advance, then it is liable to offer you an alternative flight or a full refund. Here again, passengers who book months in advance stand to lose if the airline informs them over two weeks before departure date about the cancellation. A full refund is hardly a compensation in such a case.
Source: TOI
