BUDGET carrier Scoot has apologised after one of its flights took off from Changi Airport about 1½ hours earlier than scheduled on Nov 1.
Scoot flight TR456 was originally scheduled to depart from Singapore for Kuala Lumpur at 4.50am.
But the flight was rescheduled and departed earlier at 3.21am due to “operational reasons”, Scoot said on Thursday (Dec 19) in response to queries from The Straits Times.
The budget airline did not say whether it had informed passengers about the retimed flight well ahead of departure time. It also did not state the number of passengers who did not make the 3.21am flight.
It said that the passengers who did not take the earlier flight were placed on Singapore Airlines flight SQ104, which left for KL at 7.04am on the same day.
“We sincerely apologise to all affected customers for the disruption and inconvenience caused,” Scoot said.
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At least one TR456 passenger was left behind, according to a Stomp report.
“I constantly checked the departure time using the SG Flight Info app. It remained at 4.50am,” said the passenger, who did not provide his name in the report. SG Flight Info is an app that tracks flights taking off from Changi Airport.
The passenger told Stomp that when he arrived at the empty departure gate, he “panicked” and had to “run to the nearest departure gate that was open” to seek help.
He was then directed by a staff member from Terminal 1 to a counter at Terminal 3.
“The Scoot ground staff apologised to us and stated that he did not know how it happened too.
“He took down our names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses and told us Scoot would compensate us with S$150,” the passenger said.
Although he managed to get to KL on SQ104, which took off more than two hours after his original departure time, he said he was not able to catch his subsequent connecting flights, and had to buy three additional tickets to continue with his journey.
The report did not mention where the passenger was headed to from Kuala Lumpur.
Scoot told ST its customer service team has contacted the passenger, and has “assisted him accordingly”.
In 2023, a Scoot flight departed about four hours earlier than scheduled and also left some passengers unhappy.
On Jan 18, 2023, 29 people missed their Singapore-bound Scoot flight TR509 from Amritsar, India, as their travel agent did not inform them about the change, according to an airport official.
Scoot had said then that it had informed passengers about the change on Jan 15 that year through e-mail or SMS, based on the contact details provided. THE STRAITS TIMES
