Developereo
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Comtel Air passengers forced to pay £20,000 to complete flight
Passengers on an Austrian airline flight from India to Britain said they were "held to ransom" by an airline and forced to fork out more than $31,000 in cash to complete their journey, UK media reports.
More than 180 passengers on a chartered Comtel Air flight from Amritsar in north India were stranded on the tarmac in Vienna during a refuelling stop after being told the airline "ran out of cash to fund the last leg of the trip", London's Daily Telegraph reported.
Passengers said the airline then threatened to remove their luggage from the plane if they did not pay the £20,000 ($31,200).
The message greeting visitors to Comtel Air's website this morning.
The passengers, who reportedly paid about £500 ($780) each for their flight, refused to get off the plane in a six-hour stand-off.
"Nobody has told us anything. They wanted all the money in cash. Everyone was furious, that is why we had the sit-in," passenger Tarlochan Singh, 57, told the Birmingham Mail after he arrived back in the British city.
The dispute was finally resolved when Austrian police were called and the passengers were escorted to ATMs to draw money.
But there was a further hitch - the ATMs ran out of money.
"We were escorted to take money out," another passenger, Chanhj Dehal, said.
"They said there was a deficit of nearly £24,000 and they gave us receipts. They lined up the buses and said we would be removed from the plane."
The passengers finally returned to the UK. But other passengers on different flights with Comtel Air did not even get to take off from India when their flights were cancelled, the BBC reported.
"It is absolutely disgusting. There are still people stuck out there. We have been told that the company has gone bust," Dalvinder Batra, 34, told the Telegraph.
Her 80-year-old blind relative, Gurhej Kaur, was stuck on another flight that had been stranded on the tarmac in Vienna for more than 15 hours, she said.
The budget airline, which has been running flights from Birmingham to Amritsar since last month, could not be contacted, the BBC said. Channel 4 News added that its emails were "bouncing back and phones were disconnected".
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) described the incident as "unusual to say the least".
"Passengers have to be aware when they buy tickets of where they will finish - there has to be transparency over where they are going," a CAA spokesman told Channel 4.
"Operators can't at a later stage demand money to continue the journey. There are laws protecting that kind of thing. Passengers do have rights and the laws are the same throughout the EU. We are trying to look into it."
Passengers on an Austrian airline flight from India to Britain said they were "held to ransom" by an airline and forced to fork out more than $31,000 in cash to complete their journey, UK media reports.
More than 180 passengers on a chartered Comtel Air flight from Amritsar in north India were stranded on the tarmac in Vienna during a refuelling stop after being told the airline "ran out of cash to fund the last leg of the trip", London's Daily Telegraph reported.
Passengers said the airline then threatened to remove their luggage from the plane if they did not pay the £20,000 ($31,200).
The message greeting visitors to Comtel Air's website this morning.
The passengers, who reportedly paid about £500 ($780) each for their flight, refused to get off the plane in a six-hour stand-off.
"Nobody has told us anything. They wanted all the money in cash. Everyone was furious, that is why we had the sit-in," passenger Tarlochan Singh, 57, told the Birmingham Mail after he arrived back in the British city.
The dispute was finally resolved when Austrian police were called and the passengers were escorted to ATMs to draw money.
But there was a further hitch - the ATMs ran out of money.
"We were escorted to take money out," another passenger, Chanhj Dehal, said.
"They said there was a deficit of nearly £24,000 and they gave us receipts. They lined up the buses and said we would be removed from the plane."
The passengers finally returned to the UK. But other passengers on different flights with Comtel Air did not even get to take off from India when their flights were cancelled, the BBC reported.
"It is absolutely disgusting. There are still people stuck out there. We have been told that the company has gone bust," Dalvinder Batra, 34, told the Telegraph.
Her 80-year-old blind relative, Gurhej Kaur, was stuck on another flight that had been stranded on the tarmac in Vienna for more than 15 hours, she said.
The budget airline, which has been running flights from Birmingham to Amritsar since last month, could not be contacted, the BBC said. Channel 4 News added that its emails were "bouncing back and phones were disconnected".
Britain's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) described the incident as "unusual to say the least".
"Passengers have to be aware when they buy tickets of where they will finish - there has to be transparency over where they are going," a CAA spokesman told Channel 4.
"Operators can't at a later stage demand money to continue the journey. There are laws protecting that kind of thing. Passengers do have rights and the laws are the same throughout the EU. We are trying to look into it."
the day i get good food on an airline , would be a first for me 
