OMAAT reader Vikas shares a frustrating situation that happened on a recent Air India flight, which sure does seem suspicious…
Air India bumps travelers due to “unforeseen circumstances”
On July 3, 2025, Vikas and his family were scheduled to fly on Air India from Newark (EWR) to Delhi (DEL). They live in Washington, but drove up to Newark the day prior and spent a night at an airport hotel, in order to fly the carrier’s new Airbus A350-900 nonstop.
They checked in online for their flight and had their boarding passes printed, and were ready to go. Vikas was even tracking the inbound aircraft, and it was scheduled to arrive on time, so everything was looking good.
However, on the morning of July 3, he received an email informing him of a “change in the airline schedule” due to “unforeseen circumstances.” Now, I should mentioned that he booked through online travel agency Indian Eagle.
However, he then phoned up Air India, who confirmed that his ticket was showing as canceled, and he was told to contact the travel agency for a refund. He asked the Air India representative why the itinerary was changed. Initially the agent said “there is no such reason mentioned,” but then when pressed about it, the agent said “the particular flight was unoperational from the airline” (an audio clip of the call was shared with me).
Vikas and his family were only rebooked on a Lufthansa routing via Germany for two days later, which is of course completely unacceptable. He then booked an itinerary on a combination of Emirates and Air India, which ended up costing $2,000 more than the original booking, for his family of four.
This is where it gets fun — since Vikas was spending the night at Newark, he decided to go to the airport anyway, and found the Air India flight was open for check-in. He met four other passengers who received the same notice. He also met with the station manager for Air India, who was reportedly clueless about the reason for this, but said there was nothing he could do.
Vikas concludes with the following:
My take is Air India oversold the flight and to avoid paying compensation or voluntary offloading with compensation they cooked up a lie and offloaded passengers unethically which is a breach of contract. I booked my ticket through Indian Eagle and I am still waiting for a refund, they say Air India is not releasing it.
Side note: kudos to Vikas for how he documented this incident. He even got a picture of the “canceled” flight taking off from Newark!
My take on this strange flight cancellation situation
Vikas is right to be frustrated about this situation, and to think that something is off. I think the general challenge here is figuring out where responsibility lies between Air India (the airline operating the flight) and Indian Eagle (the travel agency through which the ticket was booked). This is one of the reasons I generally avoid booking through third parties, since you often get bounced around when things go wrong. A couple of things to note:
- The email from Indian Eagle didn’t explicitly state that the flight was canceled, but instead suggested there was a “change in the airline schedule” due to “unforeseen circumstances”
- The Air India representative initially claimed that “there is no such reason mentioned” for the rebooking, but then when pressed, suggested “the particular flight was unoperational from the airline” (I’m not sure if this was actually in the record, or if it was just a case of an airline representative making something up)
So yeah, I think at least one party here is playing games, though I’m not sure which party that is. I don’t know much about Indian Eagle, but the company has a really good Trustpilot score — 4.9 stars, with 11,000 reviews.
The way I see it, there are three possible explanations:
- The flight was overbooked, and Air India somehow tried to push people off the flight for bogus reasons, in order to avoid paying denied boarding compensation; perhaps the company starts with third party bookings, since it’s the best way to dodge responsibility
- Indian Eagle plays games, and somehow had upside by trying to rebook passengers on a route that was less costly for the company, and Air India had no part in this
- Air India and Indian Eagle are somehow in cahoots to bump passengers in a mutually beneficial way, so it was a joint effort
I’m inclined to think that this had to do more with Air India than Indian Eagle, simply because when searching online, I don’t see many similar claims from Indian Eagle customers, so something doesn’t seem right. Typically it’s airlines that would push schedule changes to travel agencies, so that seems to me like the most likely explanation.
Also keep in mind that this flight was just a couple of weeks after Air India slashed much of its international network in order to focus on reliability and aircraft maintenance. So you’d certainly think that Air India flights would’ve been absolutely packed.
One way or another, the travelers need to be made whole here, because they shouldn’t be out of pocket this much to ultimately fly a less convenient routing.
Bottom line
A family of four was scheduled to fly from Newark to Delhi on Air India, and was staying at an airport hotel and all checked in for the flight, when they received a notice of a schedule change due to “unforeseen circumstances.” When pressed, an Air India representative claimed this was because the flight was “unoperational,” despite the fact that it operated right on schedule.
There’s something really fishy here, the question is just whether it was the travel agency or Air India to blame. Regardless, the travelers deserve better, given the out of pocket expenses incurred, plus significantly less convenient routing.
What do you make of this strange Air India situation, and which party do you think is to blame?
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