A Greek boy was stopped from boarding an Athens-bound flight by the ground staff of German Airlines Lufthansa at the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru. Despite holding a valid emergency passport, the boy was stopped on the grounds that he won’t be permitted to transit through Germany with the travel document. The incident took place in October 2021.
The child, who his mother accompanied, had to fly another airline to reach their destination.
The boy’s parents later sued Lufthansa in a Bengaluru consumer court, which recently ordered the airline to refund Rs 4.5 lakh towards the airfares of the mother-son duo and pay a compensation of Rs 25,000 for troubling the child.
According to a TOI report, on October 17, 2021, the boy and his mother Kyriaki Petriti, who were stranded in Bengaluru due to the pandemic situation, reached KIA to board a Lufthansa flight to Athens via Frankfurt on business class tickets costing Rs 3,26,461.
The boy’s passport was expired. Upon being unable to renew the document due to the Covid situation, his father, Ashok Prabhu, a resident of Ulsoor, got his son an emergency passport through the Greece embassy in New Delhi.
However, at the airport, Lufthansa ground staff denied boarding to the boy claiming that flying through Germany wasn’t permitted with an emergency passport. As the ground staff did not budge from their stance despite not having any supporting proof of their claims, the boy’s mom was forced to book tickets on Emirates for an additional Rs 4.49,374.
The duo then flew to Athens via Dubai without any unrest over the emergency passport.
Upon reaching their destination, Petriti wrote to the German Federal Police regarding the validity of her son’s emergency Greece passport and received a response stating that it was, indeed a valid travel document to transit via Germany.
The couple then contacted Lufthansa’s customer support but did not get a positive response. The airline further refused to issue a refund for the ticket fares.
The couple approached the Bangalore IVth additional district consumer disputes redressal commission in Shantinagar in March 2022 with a complaint against the German airline.
The court pronounced a verdict in the case on July 11 and slammed Lufthansa authorities for illegally and unjustly preventing a boy from flying despite him holding a valid emergency passport.
The court directed Lufthansa Airlines to 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 further ordered the German airline to pay Rs 15,000 for service deficiency in the boy’s case, Rs 10,000 for causing pain and suffering to his parents and Rs 2,000 towards their court expenses. The entire amount must be paid within 45 days of the court order.
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