SpiceMax flyers to Pune fume over seat chaos at Kol airport

Pune/Kolkata: Kolkata airport witnessed commotion on Friday morning after some flyers with SpiceJet’s premium SpiceMax tickets were accommodated on its newly introduced business class on the flight to Pune and the rest were allotted seats at random.
The change in seat numbers without informing passengers before the Boeing 737’s 8.35am flight left many furious.Among them was a family that was allotted non-recliner seats in the last row after booking tickets in the second row.
A woman travelling with a wheelchair-bound person said: “The web check-in facility was defunct last evening. The carrier did not bother to seek our permission before changing our seats.”
A family of three, including a child, also could not check in online. “We had confirmed tickets for seats 2A, 2B and 2C. At the boarding counter, we were told our seats would change. The staffer first told me we would be upgraded to business class. Then she said there was just one such seat and issued boarding cards with seats in the last row,” a family member told TOI at the boarding gate. “The airline did not even give us a chance to cancel the tickets. I lodged a written complaint at the boarding counter.”
When some passengers spoke to the cabin crew, one of them tried to accommodate them in the 16th row with extra leg room near the emergency gate. “But we were asked to go to the last row when the plane started taxiing,” the woman said. Flyers accompanying children were not allowed seats near emergency gates for safety reasons.
While the airline’s station manager in Kolkata was not available for comment, a ground staffer told TOI: “We are allotting business-class tickets to SpiceMax passengers on a first-come-first-served basis. We are allotting seats elsewhere once those seats are exhausted.”
SpiceJet introduced the business class on the Kolkata-Pune-Kolkata sector (earlier operated by now-grounded Jet Airways) on May 11. The aircraft currently has 12 business-class seats — four each in three rows. The airline earlier had 18 seats (three rows with six seats each) for SpiceMax passengers. If no business-class tickets are purchased, a maximum of 12 SpiceMax passengers are accommodated in the business class and the rest are allotted seats as per availability.
A Gurgaon-based SpiceJet official said: “We are accommodating SpiceMax passengers in business class as per availability of seats only at boarding counters. We are extremely sorry for changing some seats without giving them prior information. It is a temporarary logistic problem.”
(Inputs from Joy Sengupta)