BENGALURU: Despite holding a valid emergency passport, a Greek child was stopped from boarding an Athens-bound flight by ground staff of German airline Lufthansa at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), on the grounds that he won’t be permitted to transit through Germany with the emergency travel document. The child, who was accompanied by his mother, reached their destination by flying another airline.
Aggrieved, the boy’s parents sued Lufthansa in a Bengaluru consumer court,
which recently ordered the airline to refund Rs 4.5 lakh towards the airfares of the child and his mother and pay a compensation of Rs 25,000 for troubling the child on false grounds.
On October 17, 2021, the boy and his mother Kyriaki Petriti reached KIA to board a Lufthansa flight to Athens via Frankfurt on business class tickets costing Rs 3,26,461. The mother and child were stranded in Bengaluru due to the pandemic situation and the boy’s passport had expired. Unable to renew the passport due to the Covid crisis, his father Ashok Prabhu from Ulsoor had got his son an emergency passport through the Greece embassy in New Delhi on October 6, 2021. Petriti and the child were flying to Greece for the memorial ceremony of her father.
At KIA, much to the shock of the mother, Lufthansa ground staff denied boarding to the boy over a claim that flying through Germany wasn’t permitted with an emergency passport. With the Bengaluru staff standing their ground without any supportive proof, the agonised mom was forced to book tickets on Emirates for an additional Rs 4,49,374. The two then flew to Athens via Dubai without any trouble over the emergency passport.
After the harrowing incident at KIA, Petriti wrote to the German Federal Police regarding the validity of her son’s emergency Greece passport. On October 27, 2021, she received a reply stating that it was indeed a valid travel document to transit via Germany. Prabhu and Petriti contacted Lufthansa’s customer support with the reply from German authorities, but failed to get a positive response from the airline which even refused to refund the ticket fares.
Enraged by the callous response, the couple approached the Bangalore IVth additional district consumer disputes redressal commission in Shantinagar in March 2022, with a complaint against the German carrier for unfair trade practices. The couple’s lawyer presented the Greek boy’s case, while Lufthansa’s lawyer failed to file a version.
In their verdict pronounced in the case on July 11, 2023, judges of the forum slammed Lufthansa authorities for illegally and unjustly preventing a boy from flying despite him holding a valid emergency passport.
The court ruled that Lufthansa must pay a refund of Rs 3,26,461 towards the mother and son’s tickets and pay Rs 1,22,913 towards their extra cost to fly Emirates from Bengaluru. The court also said the German airline must pay Rs 15,000 for service deficiency in the minor’s case, Rs 10,000 for causing pain and suffering to his parents and Rs 2,000 towards their court expenses. The entire amount, including ticket refund, must be paid within 45 days from the court order.
Source: Times of India
