Several passengers were met with an unwelcome surprise when they showed up at the airport only to find their flight did not even exist.
Passengers Show Up To Airport To Find No Such Flight, Despite Flight Showing Up On Airline Website
Our story takes place in Hyderabad, India and concerns Go First, an Indian ultra-low-cost airline based in Mumbai. Tickets were sold on an October 31, 2022, flight from Hyderabad (HYD) to New Delhi (DEL) via Happy Fares, a popular online travel agency in India.
Small problem: the flight did not exist. Go First suspended the route on October 1st, according to the Times of India. Somehow, however, Happy Fares loaded the fare and sold tickets anyway. Importantly, all tickets were sold after the early October route suspension, so this was not simply a case of the online travel agency selling tickets on a flight that was later canceled. Instead, these tickets were exclusively sold after the route had been suspended.
Another twist: not only were credit cards charged and itineraries generated, but PNRs were generated as well that showed the flight reservation on the Go First (airline) website.
In Indian airports, your itinerary is checked before you are allowed to enter the airport facilities. Here, passengers were informed there was no such flight and were not even allowed into the airport (at least initially). Attempts to contact the airline and the travel agency failed and many ended up spending double the cost of their original ticket to reach Delhi. Others were stranded without resources to reach the Indian capital:
I need help guys.. I have done a booking from @Skyscanner by @HappyFaresindia.. They are saying my bookings are not valid after paying the full amount.. neither I have more money to buy more tickets. Stuck at airport.. neither the @GoFirstairways staff members supporting helping.
— Nikita Thakur (@NikitaT67548193) November 1, 2022
Meanwhile, the travel agent (reasonably, perhaps) believed that the flight would operate because it was showing on the airline website, though it later admitted it had received a note on October 26th stating the flight would not operate and chose not to act upon it.
This story has now been widely reported in the media, but something does not add up to me. While the Times of India says this was a “ghost flight” that never existed, I find that hard to believe. First, why would this flight show up as valid and confirmed on the airline website? Is the airline system actually that bad?
What seems to me the most likely explanation is that the flight was supposed to operate (resume) the last week in October, but it was later scrapped. When Happy Fares received an email five days in advance that the flight would not operate, it suggests to me that the flight was real, not a ghost flight from the very start. Then again, it appears that it was only this single online travel agency that sold tickets on this flight.
All of that does not matter much to the passengers who were stranded, though.
CONCLUSION
A group of passengers showed up to the airport with confirmed tickets on a flight that did not exist. While flight cancellations are fairly common, the unique aspect of this story is the allegation that tickets were sold on this flight after it was already canceled weeks ago. Whatever the case, I hope the passengers were transported to New Delhi and compensated for their inconvenience.
image: Instagram / gofirstairways
This is why you generally want to book with the airline directly. When an airline cancels a flight due to a problem with their operations, they are obligated to refund money back to passengers for the flight they cancelled, whereas OTAs basically buy the ticket for the customer and if the flight gets cancelled, they need to request the refund from the airline to give it back to the customer, and this can take much longer. If you need to book with an OTA, then booking with one of the “giants” such as Expedia or Booking.com are better than the smaller ones, but still, an OTA is an OTA, and it’s the risk of trying to save a few dollars.
OTA= not worth the risk
I had something similar happen in the Philippines once. I booked tickets MNL-KLO on a small but real airline, and when I showed up, there was no flight nor any ground staff. I had a ticket, a PNR, everything. I ultimately paid cash for a walk up fare on Cebu Pacific and flew the next day. It was only like $90, but still annoying.
I get that it’s better to book direct, but on smaller routes on domestic flights in Asia, that’s not always possible. It’s amazing how many legitimate carriers can’t accept foreign cards. In theses cases, unless you can physically walk in to a ticketing office, OTAs are often your only choice.
In April of this year my son, his wife & two children had a Delta flight booked Pellston-Detroit-Pittsburgh, PIT-DTW-PLN. They drove from Sault Ste Marie MI to PLN after their online check-in & stayed overnight near the airport. When they got to the airport in the morning they were told the flight (PLN-DTW) didn’t exist, and had not existed for six months.
They ended up driving to Pittsburgh. To Delta’s credit, they were refunded for their flight & hotel, given an additional $200 per ticket credit, paid round-trip mileage to Pittsburgh, and reimbursed for meals during the trip.
The most amazing thing is that they were able to do online check-in for a flight that did not exist.
Imagine that, India citizens scamming other India citizens. I thought they spent all their time in the phone trying to scam us. Shows the old saying there is No honor among thieves is true, at least in India.