Ticketing lapse: Air India suspends 2 officials
Days after Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal unearthed a major ticketing lapse, Air India suspended two officials saying "negligence" by its customer service staff resulted in a domestic flight operating with 23 empty seats even when there was a wait-list for the flight.
January 14, 2013 / 20:58 IST
Days after Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal unearthed a major ticketing lapse, Air India suspended two officials saying "negligence" by its customer service staff resulted in a domestic flight operating with 23 empty seats even when there was a wait-list for the flight.
Also read: Pending dues:Staff set to send legal notice to KingfisherThe airline initiated an internal probe after Venugopal, who was on board a Delhi-Kochi-Thiruvananthapuram flight on January 4, saw 23 vacant seats inside while a Kerala minister was denied a seat on grounds of "non-availability". The junior minister promptly asked Air India to probe the matter. Following the directive, the airline launched the inquiry and suspended two officials of the customer service department pending its completion. The probe found that two groups of passengers were supposed to travel by that flight as per the 'summary sheet'. However, one of these groups had not been ticketed though PNR (Passenger Name Record) numbers were issued to them, airline officials said. The customer service staff only saw the 'summary sheet' but did not pull out the PNRs to check whether tickets had been issued to this group, they said, adding that this led the flight to operate with 23 vacant seats. Had these staffers checked whether tickets had been issued on the basis of these PNRs, the vacancies would not have existed as this capacity would have been released for bookings and to accommodate waitlisted passengers, the officials said, terming it as "negligence" on part of the staffers concerned. Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
