Airline pays Bengaluru man Rs 8,000 for damaged bag wheel after 4-year legal battle

As per reports, Rabi Kumar Padhy, the man who filed the case against the airlines, was entitled to Rs 8,000 from the private airline after an order from Bangalore Urban 2nd additional district consumer disputes redressal commission.

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A man took a private airline to consumer court because of a missing wheel on his trolley bag. The case he filed ended with the airline paying the man Rs 8,000. The court case was filed by a man named Rabi Kumar Padhy. It is to be noted that the legal battle between the two parties lasted for four years. The incident of the "missing wheel" happened at Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport (KIA).

The judges who heard the case reportedly reprimanded the airline for poor service and ordered that the customer be compensated for his luggage and given an additional Rs 3,000 to cover his court costs within 45 days.

Padhy was travelling to Bengaluru from Vishakhapatnam and checked his trolley bag when the incident occurred in July of 2017. However, when he received it back from the KIA conveyer belt in Bengaluru, he allegedly discovered that one of his bag's four wheels was missing.

As his first response, Padhy filed a Property Irregularity Report (PIR) with KIA's ground staff. Later on, after two days, he received a response from the airline representative to hand over the bags to a vendor to get them fixed. Moving ahead, he received no answer until three months after the handover when he was told that the bag could not be repaired. To compensate for the damage, the airline offered Rs 1,000 to the man, later increasing the amount to Rs 3,000 as the final settlement.

Dissatisfied with the offer, Padhy filed a case against the customer service manager of the airline in Bangalore Urban 2nd additional district consumer disputes redressal commission in Shantinagar.

The airline employees' lawyers said that Padhy's complaint was without merit and sought for the case to be dismissed when the hearings began in November 2017. According to the airline, the detached wheel was apparently replaced, albeit in a different colour. As a result, the airline changed the colour of all the wheels on the trolley bag to match.

The judges heard both parties' arguments and determined that, despite the passenger's failure to submit a bill to support his claim of Rs 20,000 for the luggage, he was entitled to the Rs 8,000 compensation because the airline waited three months to find a solution and failed to explain why in court.