NEW DELHI: Nearly 400 passengers who were supposed to travel from Istanbul to Delhi and Mumbai on IndiGo flights have been stranded at the Türkiye airport for over a day now. Passengers have taken to social media to recount their terrible experience. While they were supposed to travel to Delhi (6E 12) and Mumbai (6E 18) on Wednesday night, on Friday morning — 39 hours into the delay — the airline did not say when they will fly home.
Shubham Bansal wrote on LinkedIn: “I am one of the 400 passengers stranded in Istanbul since the last 24 hours. No response (or) updates from IndiGo. Is this how you run the airline?” Another stranded passenger, Anushri Bhansali, said on SM the flight was delayed twice by an hour, then cancelled and finally rescheduled 12 hours later. While complaining of exhaustion and a fever, she also said fliers were not given any accommodation, meal vouchers or even approached by an IndiGo representative at the airport.
The chilly weather in Istanbul has added to passenger woes. Rohan Raja people were struggling as IndiGo did not provide transport to the accommodations they were allegedly provided.
Parshwa Mehta was to travel to Mumbai at 8.15 pm on Wednesday. That flight was first delayed to 11 pm, then to 10 am Thursday. This information was given to passengers by Turkish Airlines crew and not indigo, she said. “We were told we’d get lounge access at Istanbul airport as compensation. But the lounge was far too small to accommodate the huge number of stranded passengers. Many of us were left standing for hours without proper facilities. No alternative flights were offered, no proper communication was made, and to top it all off-no plans for reparations were shared,” he said on X, while lashing out at IndiGo’s “blatant failure of basic customer service”, and saying it owed passengers an apology and fair compensation.
In a statement, IndiGo said: “We are aware of the delays on the IndiGo flight connections to Istanbul. We accord the highest priority towards customer convenience and out teams are available at all contact points to assist customers. IndiGo apologises for the inconvenience caused to the customers.”
IndiGo had recently been ranked among the “world’s worst airlines” in the 2024 AirHelp Score report, securing 103rd place out of 109 with a score of 4.80. The low rating is attributed to underwhelming customer satisfaction and poor handling of flight disruption claims. Rejecting this report, IndiGo had criticised the methodology, saying the survey does not disclose the sample size from India, “casting doubt on the survey’s credibility.”
