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An Indian airline company, Jet Airways refused to carry the equipment used by Indian shooters at the ISSF Rifle and Pistol World Cup, citing a lack of documents as the problem. The shooters in question are former world number 1 Heena Sidhu and stalwart Anjali Bhagwat.
After waiting for almost 24 hours, the duo had no option but to book another flight with Air India, who readily accepted the documents for the weapons.
Heena and Anjali reached Bangkok airport around 12:30 am and were only allowed to leave the premises at around 8 am. Post the incident, they had to arrange for new tickets through the Federation and were outside the airport till early morning.
Heena told HT, “It was harassment. We were not only forced to arrange for tickets, but also had to spend the night outside Bangkok airport. It all happened because of the ignorance of the Jet Airways staff about sports weapons and the documents we were carrying.”
She added, “While returning from Busan with Korean Air, we had a transit at Bangkok for the Jet flight to India, but were informed there by Korean Air officials that Jet Airways had refused to take the weapons along. So we had to take another flight. We were left with no option but to get new tickets and for that we had to go to the counter outside the terminal.”
On the matter of incomplete papers she said, “First, we got visa on arrival and then went to the Jet Airways counter to enquire about the matter where security manager Shailesh Gala told us that our documents were incomplete. That’s why they didn’t allow the weapons. When we argued that we had DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) permission to carry the weapons from India to Busan, he said ‘back’ was not mentioned in the permission. When we asked him to give it in writing the basis on which they had denied us permission to carry the weapons, he refused.”
