'Telangana Consumer Forum' orders Indigo Airlines to pay for couple's missing baggage

Hyderabad: The State Consumer Forum ordered a compensation of Rs 1.15 lakh from Indigo Airlines for losing baggage worth Rs 2 lakh. Complainants, Sajjan Dabriwala and Saritha Dabirwala, residents of Banjara Hills, had travelled from Kolkata to Hyderabad in July 2012, after a wedding. At checkout, they found that one of their bags weighing 27 kg was missing.

Upon noticing the loss, the couple approached the airline and filed a property irregularity report the same day. But the airlines failed to respond to their complaint. The couple tried to get in touch with them several times, including sending them three emails. When that too failed to elicit a response, a police complaint was lodged.

The airline company responded saying that the luggage was not loaded from Kolkata and couldn’t be located in the CCTV footage either. They agreed that the information about loss of luggage was informed to the airport at Hyderabad.

They offered a compensation of Rs 3,000, stating that was the maximum mandated compensation as per the Condition of Carriage, which all passengers enter into while booking a flight. But the complainants refused the paltry sum and approached the consumer forum.

The forum in its verdict, observed that it was inefficiency on the part of the airlines to have misplaced the luggage when it was confirmed that it had been loaded from Kolkata. They said the compensation of Rs 3,000 was too meagre, and noted that apart from showing the terms and conditions of “Conditions of Carriage”, no evidence was brought on record to relocate the luggage. They reiterated that failure to secure luggage was purely deficiency and negligence of the airline.