NEW DELHI: A consumer commission in Kerala has held Qatar Airways guilty of deficiency in service and unfair trade practice after the airline denied boarding to a family’s two children, including a 10-month-old breastfeeding infant, during their return flight from Kochi to Italy despite issuing them boarding passes.The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Ernakulam, directed the airline to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation and Rs 25,000 towards litigation costs, in its order dated July 14.Why was the child denied boarding?According to the court order, the complaint was filed by Roshan Jose, an Indian expatriate working in Italy. Jose, his wife Vinaya, and their two children had come to Kochi from Venice in November 2018 for a holiday. Qatar Airways checked all their travel documents and issued return tickets and boarding passes for the whole family, including the infant.On December 3, 2018, the family reached the check-in counter at Kochi for their return flight and were made to wait for almost two-and-a-half hours. Just ten minutes before the flight was due to leave, the airline refused to give a boarding pass to the elder son, then six years old, saying he did not have a separate visa. The parents and the infant were given boarding passes. Left with no choice, the family handed the elder child over to relatives at the airport and boarded the flight to Doha.But at Doha, the airline again refused to let the infant board the connecting flight to Venice — even though he already had a valid boarding pass issued at Kochi after his documents were checked. After hours of waiting with no clear answer, the family was finally told the infant would not be allowed on the flight. Since Vinaya had to get back to work, she flew on to Venice alone, while Jose returned to Kochi with the infant. The baby stayed in India with relatives for weeks before being brought back to Italy, with Jose bearing all the extra costs himself.Why was Qatar Airways ordered to pay Rs 10 lakh?The bench comprising President D.B. Binu and Members V. Ramachandran and Sreevidhia T.N. noted that Qatar Airways had accepted and verified the family’s travel documents before their journey from Venice to Kochi without raising any objection. It held that the airline’s decision to deny boarding to the children during the return journey was arbitrary.“The conduct of the opposite party in preventing a child from accompanying his parents on the return journey is wholly arbitrary and has shocked the conscience of this commission,” the bench observed.It further pointed out that if the airline believed the children’s travel documents were insufficient, it should never have allowed them to travel from Italy to India or issued boarding passes for the return journey after verifying the same documents.“Having allowed the infant to travel from Venice to India, the subsequent refusal of permit for the return journey from India on the very same set of documents is patently inconsistent, unjustified and highly reprehensible,” it further added.The bench also took note of the hardship suffered by the family. It observed that the parents were forced to separate from their children because they feared losing their jobs abroad, leaving the infant in India with relatives while the mother travelled alone to Italy and the father returned to Kochi with the child.“The mental agony, emotional trauma and untold hardship suffered by the parents were the direct and inevitable consequence of the wrongful conduct of the opposite party,” the commission noted.Holding that the airline’s actions amounted to deficiency in service and an unfair trade practice, the commission directed Qatar Airways to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation for the mental agony and hardship suffered by the family, along with Rs 25,000 towards litigation costs. It directed the airline to comply with the order within 45 days, failing which the compensation amount will carry 9 per cent annual interest from the date of filing of the complaint until realisation.
