Chandigarh’s State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission ordered Lufthansa Airlines, British Airways and a travel firm to pay compensation cost of Rs 70 lakh along with the litigation cost to a 60-year-old Chandigarh woman, who had to spend an entire night at an airport jail in Denmark. Harsharn Kaur Dhaliwal had booked a round-trip from Surya Travels and Associates of Chandigarh, with Swiss Air and Lufthansa Airlines to travel from New Delhi to San Francisco via Zurich on January 18, 2018. Her return-journey tickets were from San Francisco to New Delhi via Frankfurt and scheduled for March 19, 2018.
In the judgement released on February 5 (Wednesday), the commission said that Dhaliwal had to spend a night in the lock-up of Copenhagen airport due to the re-routing of her return-flight from San Francisco. It held that if a lady is “detained publicly” at an airport, it led to “ignominy” and lowers her reputation. The woman’s suffered arrest and detention without her fault and due to “sheer negligence” of both the airlines. Thus the case required that the “exemplary cost” be imposed on the accused parties.
According to Dhaliwal, she boarded a Lufthansa flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt on March 19, 2018, and stayed seated in the flight for about three hours but it did not take off. She was then asked to de-board and collect her baggage, during when she alleged that she was not given wheelchair assistance because of which it was difficult for her to collect her luggage. She called her son to help with the same later. Without her knowledge, Lufthansa Airlines rerouted her flight and gave her a ticket for the same via London on British Airways. So, she had to fly to Copenhagen from London and then from there to New Delhi.
Dhaliwal’s plane from San Francisco was late, as a result of which, she missed her connecting flight from London. When she finally arrived at Copenhagen, there was no connecting flight to New Delhi, as per schedule, she argued in the complaint. Left without a Visa, she was “unauthorizedly detained” by the airport police at Copenhagen for a night and “treated like a criminal”. It was only when the woman’s husband contacted the ambassador concerned, that she was sent to India via Turkish Airlines from Copenhagen to Istanbul. From there, she reached New Delhi by another flight on March 22.
Following her complaint filed on May 2, 2019, Lufthansa said their responsibility was limited to rebooking the passengers in another aircraft and it kept the complainant updated about the state of flights. It also made re-routed/re-booked the tickets immediately, so the complaint did not stand against it. The British Airways, in its written reply, said it had nothing to do with the purchase of tickets from Surya Travels by the complainant. Surya Travels said the complainant was rerouted due to technical glitches, for which she already received compensation from the insurance company.
The commission maintained that the airlines should have arranged a transit visa for her before “re-routing her journey” and asked Lufthansa Airlines and British Airways to pay Rs 64.5 lakh to Dhaliwal as compensation. It directed Surya Travels and Associates to pay Rs 5 lakh to her, the three parties concerned were also asked to pay Rs 50,000 in equal shares to the woman as cost of litigation.
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