Following the shutdown of Russian airspace, some United Airlines flights planned to travel from Mumbai and Delhi have been cancelled, resulting in longer flight times and higher fuel usage. Hundreds of passengers, including many from Kolkata, have been stranded as a result of the abrupt cancellation.
According to industry sources, the airline has planned new flights on the sector for which tickets must be acquired again because the flights had become unviable due to the requirement to fly roughly two hours longer to avoid Russian airspace.
"The flights before then were part of an open skies policy. The airline has resorted to the air bubble arrangement and introduced these flights because the Indian government has yet to establish regular commercial overseas flights "an official from the industry said.
Regardless of how the airlines schedule the extra flights, travellers will now have to pay a higher fare. A travel agent stated, "The airline is not accommodating economy class guests who booked aeroplane tickets at lesser pricing."
Subir Kumar Bandyopadhyay, a Santoshpur native who was supposed to fly from Mumbai to Newark on the United aircraft on March 10 with his wife Janhabi, was stunned to find that the trip had been cancelled. "We were not informed of the cancellation by the airline." Officials could not be reached.
Joydeep Mukherjee, a travel agent, was able to book two Emirates Airlines flights to JFK through Dubai on the same day. "There were just two economy class seats available, which I issued for Rs1.65 lakh each. All seats are now occupied”, Mukherjee stated.
Several cancelled flights are shown on the Galileo booking platform for travel brokers during the next few days. Other flights have been allocated to virtually all of them, but because tickets are more expensive, all those who had previously booked in economy class must rebook or choose a later departure date when the revised pricing is comparable to the cost of the tickets they had purchased.
Direct flights from Mumbai and Delhi, according to industry sources, were the ones affected.
