Noida Man Shares PNR With 'Airline Trainee', Loses Flight Tickets Worth Rs 72,000

An Indigo airlines passenger almost lost tickets worth Rs 72,600 after he spoke to an alleged ‘airline trainee’ who reached out to him via the airline’s official X handle. Nishith Chaturvedi had booked eight flight tickets for his family from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi. On January 7, hours before their flight, the software engineer tried to do the web check-in but saw that the auto-assignment of seats was not available, which meant that he was required to pay an extra amount for the seats. He then sent a message to IndiGo’s official X handle via DM asking why he was required to pay an additional amount for all eight seats.

A few minutes later, he received a response from a customer support executive who asked Chaturvedi to share the flight’s PNR number, which he did. Soon at 1.38 am, he received an email from Cleartrip, the online booking agency through which he had booked the tickets, saying that all his tickets were cancelled.

Chaturvedi told Moneycontrol that he immediately reached out to the Indigo customer care service and the airline told him that the booking was cancelled from his end. When he insisted that he had not cancelled the tickets, the airline said that it was possible that Cleartrip must have cancelled them. However, Cleartrip representatives also clarified that they did not initiate any cancellation.

IndiGo informed Chaturvedi that someone changed his registered phone number and email ID in their systems and they will investigate the case. If they find any lapse from their side, Chaturvedi would get the refund.

Chaturvedi eventually booked new tickets for Delhi but had to advocate for a refund with IndiGo. Luckily at 4 am, he got the refund. Recalling the incident, he told the portal, “Indigo was refusing to accept the security lapse. Also, the tickets were worth more than Rs 72,000. It was not a small amount and booking tickets again would mean a total expense of about Rs 1.5 lakh.”

This incident forced him and his family to spend a night at the Thiruvananthapuram airport as they waited for IndiGo and Cleartrip to resolve the issue. The 39-year-old criticised IndiGo for refusing to admit their major security lapse on their count and said, “If they didn’t cancel my tickets, and neither did Cleartrip and there definitely was a lapse. And how did my phone number and email id change in their systems when I did not initiate it?”