Confusion over air tickets being bought with old Rs 500 notes

As Friday was the deadline for using demonetised currency of Rs 500 denominations at airports, heavy rush was witnessed at the ticket counters of all the major airlines at Delhi’s IGI Airport. 

The crowd became unmanageable at the counters of airlines due to shortage of sufficient staff in accepting and sorting of the cash. Abhishek Tandon, who was in the queue to buy tickets for Bengaluru, said: “I am trying to board my flight for Bengaluru. I am trying to spend some of the banned Rs 500 notes by buying the tickets through cash transactions.” He further stated that a lot of people were there to do cash transactions to spend their Rs 500 notes and hence, it was taking a lot of time for each transaction to complete. 

An employee of an airline said on condition of anonymity: “Over the past two to three days, there has been a huge rush with people trying to buy tickets through cash. This has only added to our workload.” The airlines have also strictly mentioned that there will be no refund of the transactions done through banned Rs 500 notes.