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Ernakulam District Consumer Commission Penalizes ₹10 Lakh for Denying Boarding to Minors
In a strongly worded order that underscores the accountability of international carriers towards the families they serve, the , has imposed a penalty of ₹10 lakh on for arbitrarily refusing to board two minor children on their return flight to Italy, despite having accepted the very same travel documents just weeks earlier for the onward journey. The Commission, comprising President D.B. Binu and Members V. Ramachandran and Sreevidhia T.N. , termed the airline’s conduct a “” and an “” that inflicted severe on the young family.
A Family Visit Turns Into a Nightmare
Roshan Jose , an Indian national working in Italy, had planned a brief family trip to his native Kannur in Kerala during the end of 2018. He, his wife Vinaya, and their two little children—a six-year-old boy and a breastfeeding infant barely ten months old—held confirmed return tickets with from Venice to Kochi via Doha. The infant’s visa was under process, but Italian authorities had issued a formal receipt that was accepted as a valid travel document. When the family checked in at Venice airport on , the airline’s officials thoroughly verified every document and issued boarding passes to all four members without the slightest objection. The onward journey from Venice to Doha and then to Kochi passed smoothly.
The nightmare began on , the scheduled date of return. At Kochi international airport, the family was made to wait for nearly two-and-a-half hours while the staff conducted “verification.” Just ten minutes before departure, the six-year-old was denied boarding on the ground that he lacked an independent Italian visa. With the couple due to report for work in Italy within days, they were forced to leave the elder child with relatives who had accompanied them to the airport, and board the aircraft with only the infant.
Transit Refusals and a Forced Return
The ordeal did not end in Kochi. At Doha, where the family was to catch the connecting flight QR125 to Venice, the same airline officials who had already issued boarding passes from Kochi now stopped the infant from travelling. Despite having a valid boarding pass and the identical documents that had been accepted earlier, the baby was declared ineligible to fly to Italy. The mother had to proceed alone to save her job, while Roshan Jose had to fly back to Kochi with the infant, entrusting the child to his parents before eventually returning to Italy at his own expense. The elder child was later brought to Italy on a fresh visa and through an air hostess service, while the infant remained separated from his mother for weeks until the father made yet another costly trip to bring him back.
Airline’s Defense and the Commission’s Scathing Rejection
argued in its written version that passengers alone are responsible for carrying correct travel documents, and that it had acted on instructions from immigration authorities in Venice and Doha. The airline’s witness, the Cargo Operations Manager, maintained that the permanent resident card produced by the complainants was not sufficient for the infant.
The commission, however, was unmoved. It noted that the airline had ample opportunity to reject the documents at the very first instance—at Venice airport—but chose not to. “If the travel documents of the infant were not sufficient for international travel, the opposite party ought not to have permitted the children to undertake the onward journey from Venice in the first instance,” the order states. The bench found the subsequent refusal to be “patently inconsistent, unjustified and highly reprehensible.”
Key Observations from the Bench
The order minced no words while describing the impact on the family:
“The conduct of the opposite party in preventing a child from accompanying his parents on the return journey is wholly arbitrary and has shocked the conscience of this Commission.”
“Having allowed the infant to travel from Venice to India, the subsequent refusal of permit for the return journey from India on the very same set of documents is patently inconsistent, unjustified and highly reprehensible.”
“The , emotional trauma and untold hardship suffered by the parents were the direct and inevitable consequence of the wrongful conduct of the opposite party.”
The commission concluded that such action amounted to a clear as well as an .
and Interest
The order directs to pay ₹10,00,000 (Rupees Ten Lakh only) as for the and hardship suffered, along with ₹25,000 towards . The amounts must be paid within 45 days from the date of receipt of the order. If the airline fails to comply, the shall carry interest at 9% per annum from the date of filing of the complaint until realisation.
A Cautionary Ruling for Airlines
This judgment sends a strong message to international carriers: once a passenger is accepted for travel based on a set of documents, the same documents cannot be arbitrarily invalidated for the return journey unless there is a material change in immigration requirements. For thousands of expatriate families shuttling between their country of residence and India, the ruling serves as a crucial safeguard against high-handed treatment at airports, reinforcing that consumer courts will not tolerate conduct that separates parents from their infants on flimsy procedural grounds.
