In a new low of poor customer care, passengers travelling on a Comtel flight from India to Birmingham were asked to cough up more than £20,000 to fund the rest of their flight back to the UK.

Service and value for money has been on a steady slump amongst airlines for the past few years, with expected flight trends of longer queues, more frequent delays and additional surcharges.

But in an industry where customer perks are becoming less and less, news that airline passengers had to pay inflight for petrol came as a shock to even the most familiar travellers.

Comtel flight to Birmingham…

The hundred and odd passengers were stranded for over six hours in Vienna, where the Comtel Flight had stopped for fuel on Tuesday. Customers were literally kicked off the flight and told ‘If you want to go to Birmingham, you have to pay.’

Some passengers left the plane to find the nearest cash machine and withdraw the money from there.

A passenger on the flight said that on average most people contributed £130 each, with children under two not having to pay the charges.

Though this remains a freak incident for European travel, it marks a time a dark period in airline customer care – one which this airline will most likely not recover from.

Understandably, many of the travellers who paid the fuel charge were immensely angry. One passenger called his experience with the airline ‘absolutely disgusting’.

In light of the customer onslaught, the airlines majority shareholder Bhupinder Kandra blamed the problem on the booking agents, saying that they had not passed the airline fees for the flights. Kandra firmly stated that the call on passengers to pay for petrol was nothing to do with cash flow problems, though many have squashed those comments saying that such a desperate attempt to acquire money points to only one thing.

And with such a deformation on the airline’s image, regardless of whether the airline has finical troubles now, they indefinitely will following of the latest escapades of Comtel Flight from India to Birmingham.