Air Costa grounds flights, denies financial trouble
Over 2,000 passengers who had booked their tickets were affected due to the cancellations.
Hyderabad: Vijayawada-based airline Air Costa suspended all its flights for Thursday. The airline has three Embraer E-190 aircraft of 110-seat capacity each, which make 24 trips to nine cities including seven in South India cities and two others in Northwest including Ahmedabad and Jaipur daily.
Over 2,000 passengers who had booked their tickets were affected due to the cancellations. Airline management maintained that passengers were informed in advance and were given three options.
“The three options included passengers being accommodated on another airline’s flight on the same day without any additional fare due to IROP i.e. irregular operations; the second option was a full refund and the third was re-booking on Air Costa flights from Friday,” said staff of the airline.
Some passengers at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, however, got into arguments with airline staff for Air Costa failing to accommodate them on other airlines’ flights by afternoon. They were accommodated on evening flights.
Non-payment of lease rent was said to be the reason for the airline suspending operations. Industry sources added that many staff were asked to take leave on Thursday. But official spokesperson Mr Pramod Mitta told DC that the LEPL Group, headquartered at Vijayawada, which runs Air Costa, was “stable”.
Dubai crash impact
Flights on the Hyderabad-Dubai sector were cancelled on Thursday due to non-availability of runway at Dubai airport. This follows the crash-landing of the Emirates flight on Wednesday. Meanwhile, other flights from RGIA were hit by bad weather.