Mangaluru: Air India has suddenly cancelled all its Mangaluru-Mumbai flighst from July 12th to September 30th without any prior information and put passengers who have already booked their tickets within the cancelled period in a fix.

“The Mangaluru-Mumbai flights have been cancelled due to ‘operational reasons’ for 81 days,” is the only information given to ‘Udayavani’ by Air India Company officials in Mangaluru.

Haj pilgrimage will begin soon and in such a situation, the people have expressed anger at the company’s decision to cancel its flights. Also, it’s being said that this action has been taken to facilitate Haj pilgrimage. But, by giving a strong reason for its sudden decision, Air India has given scope to suspicions.

Air India company had given opportunity to book flights online till June 25th. The company suddenly displayed the message to all passengers booking ticket on June 26th that all Mangaluru-Mumbai flights have been cancelled from July 12th.

Air India Company has not provided any alternate facility to passengers who have booked their tickets. Instead, opportunity has been provided for refund of the ticket payment, said an official of the company.

There is a daily Mangaluru-Mumbai Air India flight in the afternoon at 12:45pm. In comparison to other plane companies, Air India’s flight price is a bit low. Since there are many people from Karavali who are living in Mumbai, the people depend on this flight for their needs.

If the ticket is booked early, its price will be considerably lower and therefore, many passengers had already booked Mangaluru-Mumbai tickets. Also, since the luggage upto 25kgs is permissible on Air India domestic flights, most of the passengers opt for Air India. And alos another reason why people opt for this flight is that there are enough number of connecting flights for this flight from Mumbai.