{"id":730,"date":"2011-11-17T06:35:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T06:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/?p=730"},"modified":"2011-11-17T06:35:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T06:35:00","slug":"stranded-passengers-forced-to-pay-airline-fuel-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/2011\/11\/stranded-passengers-forced-to-pay-airline-fuel-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Stranded passengers forced to pay airline fuel bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.travelmole.com\">TravelMole<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Passengers on a flight from India to Britain claim they were forced to fork out more than $31,000 in cash to pay for fuel to allow the plane to complete the journey, UK media reports.<\/p>\n<p>More than 180 passengers on a chartered Austrian <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comtelair.at\/index.php?id=24&#038;L=1\">Comtel Air<\/a> flight from Amritsar to Birmingham were stranded on the tarmac in Vienna during a refuelling stop after being told the airline &#8220;ran out of cash to fund the last leg of the trip&#8221;, London&#8217;s Daily Telegraph reported.<\/p>\n<p>Passengers said the airline then threatened to remove their luggage from the plane if they did not pay up.<\/p>\n<p>The passengers, who reportedly paid about $780 each for their flight, refused to get off the plane in a six-hour standoff.<\/p>\n<p>The dispute was finally resolved when Austrian police were called and the passengers were escorted to ATMs to withdraw cash.<\/p>\n<p>Bhunpinder Kandra, director of passenger services for Comtel Air, told BBC News that &#8220;there may have been some operational problem&#8221; in Vienna but denied people were asked to pay towards more fuel.<\/p>\n<p>But the Press Association reported him saying: &#8220;I have heard what happened, it shouldn&#8217;t have happened, and I will investigate why it happened.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The people who had to pay the money will receive a refund.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: TravelMole Passengers on a flight from India to Britain claim they were forced to fork out more than $31,000 in cash to pay for fuel to allow the plane to complete the journey, UK media reports. More than 180 passengers on a chartered Austrian Comtel Air flight from Amritsar to Birmingham were stranded on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/traveloscopy.com\/travel-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}