In a shameful act, Jet Airways flight on Friday deplane five passengers to accommodate the members of ‘influential’ wedding party, who showed up late to the airport.
As per reported by filtercopy, a wedding party consisting of 80 people was on their way Mumbai to Bhopal in Jet Airways flight 9W7083, out of which 17 people showed up late to the airport, as a result of which they were thrown off the flight because of over-booking.
Interestingly, the entire group of 80 people then decided to threaten the airline, telling them that the 63 passengers on board would get off the flight if the 17 latecomers weren’t let on.
Astoundingly, instead of using this opportunity to throw the hooligans out, the Jet Airways staff began trying to convince other passengers to give up their seats to accommodate the wedding party.
To incentivise passengers to deplane, Jet Airways offered a sum of Rs. 10,000 to each passenger.
This, for obvious reasons caused a lot of chaos and delayed the flight. The flight, initially scheduled to land at 0710 hours, finally took off at 0800 and landed at 0910 hours.
It is easy to wonder, how were the 17 allowed to get through to the boarding gates if they weren’t confirmed passengers? Is it safe to assume that they were simply rushed through a security check in what would be a serious security breach?
Also, a group of people threatening the pilot and the crew, forcing their will upon them and in effect causing an entire flight to stand still – doesn’t that simply count as hijacking?
In the end, five people de-boarded taking Jet Airway’s concession offer.
At this point, the pilot announced that the Bhopal airport was scheduled to close at 9am for renovation, a fact that was well known before hand but gracefully ignored while wasting time trying to get people to de-board for a bunch of hooligans to get on.
It also appears that the wedding family is linked to a powerful minister, and so (obviously) Jet Airways decided to not take a stand against them and fell like squirming worms to their feet.
