We (myself, my wife, and our 4-year-old son) had our SpiceJet flight SG 8251 from Delhi to Kolkata on June 19, 2023. The scheduled departure time was 9:40 pm. After checking in, we noticed that the displayed departure time of the flight has been changed to 11:15 pm. The revised time of 11:15 pm was displayed across all the screens we noticed at the airport. Considering that the flight was delayed, we went to the lounge to have our dinner and decided to reach the designated gate an hour before at 10:15 pm.

To our horror, when we reached the designated gate at 10:15 pm, the flight had already departed. The screen still showed that the departure time is 11:15 pm. I contacted customer care of SpiceJet and after a long conversation, they were completely useless and did not provide any resolution. Post this, we went to the SpiceJet counter at the airport to report our concerns. We requested the concerned person that it is urgent for us to reach Kolkata, and hence to book us the earliest morning flight for the next day. We also explained that it wasn’t our fault that we missed the flight, rather it was due to the wrong timing displayed on the screen at the airport. After a long conversation, the final resolution SpiceJet came up with was to provide us tickets for the next flight which was after 24 hours. This clearly demonstrated their non-empathetic attitude and expected us to wait at the airport for 24 hours with a 4-year-old child. We tried to explain multiple times to them that it is not possible to spend such a long time at the airport. However, they provided no better resolution. In the end, we had to agree to a refund and had to spend 3X the amount of the refund to book our tickets on the next available flight with a different airline.

This was a horrible experience for us and had to spend the whole night at the airport with our 4-year-old son. The SpiceJet staff along with the airport staff and GMR who manages the airport were least bothered. We not only suffered financial loss but mental harassment due to horrible service standards maintained by SpiceJet and GMR. It was utter dismay to see such horrible service standards being maintained at the airport in our nation’s capital.