IndiGo has returned the Delhi-Patna ticket to Afsar Hussain, who had taken a Udaipur flight on January 30 after a series of mishaps.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has learned to find ways to ensure that such a thing, the wrong person on the wrong flight, does not happen again. "IndiGo refunded Hussain's tickets," said several people in the know. This means that the passenger flew three flights last Monday - Delhi-Udaipur and Udaipur-Delhi and then finally Delhi-Patna - for the cost of none last Tuesday.
Authorities are puzzling over how the passenger got on the wrong flight and then didn't even realize it when the distance and flight time announcements to the plane's destination came before takeoff.
Now the regulator is looking at the entire sequence of events to fill in the gaps that allowed this bug to go undetected. Once again, Indian airports are teeming with domestic passengers and such confusion at the bus gate – where buses take passengers to their respective flights – needs to be avoided in future.