Airlines Selling Tickets For Ghost Flights: Passengers

Mumbai: Sachin Shetty bought three tickets in the second week of June for a Mumbai-Mangalore non-stop flight for July 5. Four days before departure, the low-cost carrier told him the flight was cancelled and his money had been moved to a credit shell. He later learnt that Mangalore is not connected to Mumbai by direct flights now, so why did the airline sell him the ticket?

- Manju V

Businessman Brijesh Sutaria on May 30 booked a Mumbai-Delhi flight ticket for June 7. The next day, the airline told him his flight was cancelled and his Rs4,200 had gone into a credit shell for later use.

Flight cancellations due to new restrictions by a state, like one recently by West Bengal government, are understandable. But in the past few weeks, passengers like Shetty and Sutaria found they were sold tickets for flights not scheduled at all or were likely to be cancelled later due to low demand.