Pune: Businessman Murtaza Poonawala’s son, Mohammad (17), undertook a 36-hour bus ride from Jaipur to reach his Camp home as he was stranded in Rajasthan capital after exams amid the IndiGo fiasco.A bus seat cost Poonawala Rs7,500. The price of Mohammad’s cancelled flight ticket was Rs6,800.The first-year college was slated to take an IndiGo flight from Jaipur to Pune on Dec 4. “His flight, scheduled at 9.30pm, was first rescheduled to 11.30pm and then cancelled. He called me from the airport and said there was total chaos. I told him to wait in the queue,” Poonawala said.After over an hour, the airline gave him two options — to fly from Jaipur to Pune via Udaipur or from Jaipur to Pune via Delhi on Dec 6. “I advised him against it. The airline then offered him the same direct flight for Dec 6,” Poonawala said.On Dec 6, Mohammad received a text message from the airline stating that his flight was cancelled. “He immediately informed me about it. I thought of booking a cab for him and called some contacts for help, but in vain. Then I opened an application having bus schedules. I found a bus that would leave for Pune on the same evening. My son thought of somehow going to Delhi, but I advised him against it because every sector of IndiGo was hampered. I insisted that he took the bus. He finally boarded it around 6.30pm on Dec 6,” Poonawala said.When Mohammad was on his way to take the bus, he received a text message from IndiGo stating that the cancelled flight would fly at 6pm and he should do the check-in. “I told him to take the bus despite his wish to go to the airport. He reached home around 3am on Dec 8. We have applied for a refund, but IndiGo is yet to process it,” he said.
