Singapore Airlines has been ordered to pay over $2,000 to an Indian couple who complained about a malfunction in the business-class seats aboard the plane. Ravi Gupta, the Director-General of Police in Telangana and his wife, Anjali, were flying on a flight from Hyderabad to Australia. They paid around $800 each for each of their business-class seats. The incident happened last year in May, New York Post reported.
The couple complained that their seats would only manually recline and not automatically. According to reports, they criticised the airline for the “mental agony and physical suffering” endured by them during the 5-hour flight with a layover in Singapore.
The couple cited their feelings of being treated like “economy-class passengers” despite them paying for spacious business-class accommodation. In court documents, they claimed that were forced to stay awake throughout the journey.
In a statement to The Independent, Singapore Airlines confirmed the “faulty” automatic recline feature in their seats. “Our crew proactively checked in on these customers regularly and offered to manually recline the seat when needed,” a spokesperson told the outlet.
“As it was a full flight, SIA staff unfortunately could not reseat the customers elsewhere in the Business Class cabin.” The spokesperson also mentioned that there were “no issues” on their connecting flight to Perth, Australia.
To compensate for their dissatisfactory experience, the couple were offered 10,000 frequent flyer miles. However, they declined the offer and sued Singapore Airlines.
They were awarded $2,400 (Rs 2,00,405 approximately) in court at the end of April, according to the report in New York Post.
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