On Tuesday, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Central government on a plea filed by Air Passengers Association of India seeking a refund on tickets for flights cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.
A bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice MR Shah issued notice to the Centre and others and tagged it with a similar plea pending before the court.
Earlier in June, the top court had asked the Ministry of Civil Aviation and airlines to sit together and work on modalities for ways to refund the money of passengers for cancellation of their tickets during the COVID-19 lockdown.
The petitions pending before the apex court had sought the complete refund of the money spent by people on booking airline tickets, which were cancelled due to the lockdown.
The apex court had suggested that a credit note by airlines must have a life of at least two years and for any route, if that is the way out.
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The petition had urged the court to declare the alleged action of airlines of not refunding the entire value of the cancelled air tickets as violative of the civil aviation requirement issued by the authority.
It claimed that the April 16 office memorandum directing airlines to provide the full refund of the amount paid to only those people who booked tickets during the lockdown period.
The plea said that the order left out the people who booked tickets prior to lockdown, but added that the flights cancelled due to lockdown amount to treating equals unequally, and thus the same is in clear violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
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The nationwide-lockdown, which was imposed in March, had meant the suspension of regular flights to and from cities in India. Repatriation flights for foreign citizens have been operating with government approvals.
However, even as domestic flight services resumed in India in a phased manner, the arrival and departure of as many aircraft were cancelled at major airports of the country, often at a moment’s notice.
Long queues comprising of several passengers were seen outside most major airports in India over the weeks, where visuals showed disappointed passengers sitting outside the airport after their flights were cancelled. Passengers also reportedly complained about the airlines not informing them of their cancelled flights until the last minute and even after that, no proper confirmation regarding potential rescheduling of the flights have been provided.
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Reports have quoted airport officials as saying that the flights were cancelled because of several states telling the central government that they will not be able to operate the flights that had been agreed upon earlier.
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