Turkish delight gone sour
Shouldn’t airlines re-route when a flight is cancelled?
Airlines need to get better at re-routing passengers for canceled flights. Cancellations, flight delays and poor refund practices are leaving consumers and passengers unprotected and nowhere to go.
147 students from Sri Lanka, studying in universities in Belarus were left stranded on 7th July, after Turkish Airlines cancelled all flights from Minsk to Istanbul from that day onwards.. These students had paid for their return flight in full in June – with some paying for their tickets, as far back in November 2021.
They were all planning to spend time back home this month during the 40-day holiday closure of universities in July. Students claim that the airline had not notified them of the cancellation and were told about it only after getting to the airport – among them were those who arrived to get on board, after an eight-hour journey by bus.
Parents of these hapless students claim that the airline is refusing to re-route these students or pay for the additional expense incurred to obtain a visa to Russia and fly via Moscow to Istanbul, if they wish to connect with the airline’s flights to Colombo.
It was disclosed on last month, that the Tourism Ministry of Sri Lanka had entered into discussions with Turkish Airlines to bring it on board as a promotion partner, as reported by The Sunday Morning. In order to make the deal official, the Tourism Ministry had requested the airline to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).
Speaking to The Sunday Morning, Tourism Ministry Secretary Chulananda Perera had said the discussions were going on between Sri Lanka and Turkish Airlines, after the airline had responded favourably to the proposal.
According to Perera, Turkish Airlines, the world’s second largest airline has the potential to attract a number of tourists from different countries to travel to Sri Lanka.
Ironically, the airlines is now embroiled in refusing to fly Sri Lankan students out of Belarus, after the students, had paid for their tickets and now have no one to turn to.
Hospitality Sri lanka
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