Nearly 400 passengers who were supposed to travel from Istanbul to Delhi and Mumbai on IndiGo flights have been stranded at the Turkiye airport for almost two days now.
Passengers have now taken to social media to recount their experience. While they were supposed to travel to Delhi (6E12) and Mumbai (6E18) on Wednesday night, queries sent to IndiGo on when the passengers would be flown to India remained unanswered till Friday night.
Shubham Bansal wrote on LinkedIn: “I am one of the 400 passengers stranded in Istanbul. No response (or) updates from IndiGo. Is this how you run the airline?”
IndiGo owes us an apology & compensation: Stranded flyers
Another stranded passenger, Anushri Bhansali, said on social media the flight was delayed twice by an hour, then cancelled and finally rescheduled 12 hours later. While complaining of exhaustion and fever, she said flyers were not provided accommodation, meal vouchers or even approached by an IndiGo representative at the airport.
In a statement Friday night, IndiGo said: “Due to technical issues, IndiGo flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Istanbul experienced delays. This led to cascading delays in the return sectors. All necessary steps were taken to ensure customers were apprised, and they were provided with refreshments and accommodation, where possible. We regret the inconvenience caused to customers and appreciate their understanding and patience. All operations are normalised now.” The chilly weather in Istanbul has added to passenger woes.
Parshwa Mehta was to travel to Mumbai at 8.15pm on Wednesday. That flight was first delayed to 11pm, then to 10am 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,” another passenger posted on X, while lashing out at IndiGo’s “blatant failure of basic customer service”, and saying it owed passengers an apology and fair compensation.
IndiGo had recently been ranked among “world’s worst airlines” in 2024 AirHelp Score report, securing 103rd place out of 109 with a score of 4.8. Rejecting this report, IndiGo had criticised the methodology.