Rajesh Singh, who was heading to Patna to attend a family wedding on Thursday, said his Thursday flight was rescheduled several times before finally being allotted at 5:30 pm. “I reached the airport only to learn it was cancelled. Now I can no longer attend the wedding,” he said outside the airport.Soubhik Roy, who works in Delhi, said his father-in-law in Kolkata suffered a cardiac arrest, but such was the situation that he couldn’t manage a ticket for himself and his wife to rush to Kolkata in this hour of crisis. “There are no seats available on direct flights, and one-stop flights too can’t guarantee when they can reach Kolkata,” he said.Avik Sarkar, who was flying to Kolkata from Bengaluru, said the disruption jeopardised an entire chain of travel plans. Sarkar was booked on an IndiGo flight to Kolkata on Wednesday and was to take another flight to Arunachal Pradesh on Saturday morning. He is still stuck in Bengaluru.“I booked an IndiGo flight scheduled to leave at 10:05 pm on Wednesday. As soon as I reached around 6:30 pm, I received a notification that the flight was cancelled,” he said. The link provided to rebook the flight did not work despite repeated attempts. “With no seats available in any other airline, I had only two options — take a flight with a two-hour layover in Port Blair or wait 24 hours for the next direct flight. I was forced to choose the latter,” he said, adding that he had to buy a fresh ticket for Friday for Rs 24,000. Sarkar now fears he may miss his onward travel to Assam scheduled on Saturday. “I don’t even know whether I’ll reach home on time,” he said.The chaos was no different for Rakesh Rastogi, who flew into Kolkata from Delhi with his family for a wedding after a 14-hour delay, but the ordeal took an even more unexpected turn once they reached Kolkata. Their luggage never arrived. “The morning flight was delayed by several hours and finally took off at 10 pm. When we got down at Kolkata, we found our trolley bags were missing,” he said. According to him, the ground staff informed them the luggage was still in Delhi. Sourojit Dutta, a linguist from Durgapur, said his IndiGo flight from Bengaluru was delayed multiple times. “I reached the airport at 8:30 am for my 11 am flight. Only then did I learn it was delayed by an hour. It kept getting pushed back, and finally took off at 1:45 pm,” he said.On social media, travellers vented their frustration as rerouted flights collapsed mid-route. Devashish Chakravarty wrote on X that his Kolkata–Mumbai flight on Thursday was cancelled and he was rerouted via Patna. “Patna-Mumbai flight too got cancelled. IndiGo refused rerouting. On top, asking full charges for cancellation,” he posted.
