Flight cancelled but doesn't show up on status

Question

I booked a SpiceJet flight from Dubai to Ahmedabad on Dec 16 (SG-16) scheduled to depart at 7:25 PM. At noon I received an SMS from SpiceJet to advise me that my flight has been delayed by 4h 50m. Sure enough, when I checked flight status on SpiceJet's website, that was the case. But on other websites like flightstats.com and dubaiairports.ae, the status was that flight was "delayed by 2h 25m".

At 5 PM, I got an SMS that flight had been cancelled. I double checked on Spicejet's website and that too showed the flight to be cancelled. But both flightstats.com and dubaiairports.ae still showed the flight as delayed by 2h 25m.

I went to the airport and met SpiceJet officials. Sure enough, the flight was cancelled. But somehow, the flight cancellation status never made it to the system. I have a Tripit Pro account, and even that never sent me an alert for that. I contacted the travel agent through which I booked my flight (makemytrip) for a refund, and they said that their system doesn't show that flight was cancelled. Now, even the Spicejet website has removed the cancellation status from that flight.

Apart from the SMS, I now have no proof that my flight was cancelled.

Can someone tell me, how can I proceed with a refund claim?

Answer 1

Spicejet are in the middle of massive upheavals and attempts to refinance debt and gain increased government support.

According to the news report referenced below ALL Spicejet flights were cancelled on Tuesday 16th and at least half on Wednesday. ALL the people you are dealing with are fully aware of what is happening and if you are "getting the run around" it is highly likely that it is because they are trying to minimise their own exposure to any losses.

Here is an IBNLIVE news article from December 17th.

In part it says

• New Delhi: In more trouble for the cash-strapped airline SpiceJet, the operations remain grounded for the second day on Wednesday as oil companies have stopped fuel supply, the sources said.

  "Not even a single flight has taken off till this morning due to fuel supply issue with the oil companies," sources said.

  The state-run oil marketing firms have not yet taken a decision on the resumption of jet fuel supply to SpiceJet on a two-weeks credit facility, they said.

This MAY be useful:

• DGCA earlier withdrew 186 of its slots and had asked the airline to clear salary dues of all its employees as early as possible. The DGCA had also directed the airline not to take bookings of flights over one month and refund the booking amount to the customers of cancelled flights in 30 days.

  ---

Related:

With this much news information you should be able to convince people you are dealing with that you know that they know what happened. Whether that helps is to be seen.

Times of India - similar information.

Times again coming right on 17th apparenetly on a cash for fuel basis.

and more Kannadaprabha Thursday, December 18, 2014 10:54 PM IST

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