‘Ankle Shattered’: Gurgaon Resident Blames Indigo For Ramp Mishap; Airline Responds

New Delhi: A Gurgaon resident, Ratnendu Ray, shared his harrowing ordeal of breaking his ankle while deboarding an Indigo flight from Chennai to Delhi on August 14. Recounting the incident in a series of posts, he cautioned fellow passengers about the airline’s alleged negligence in ensuring safe boarding and deboarding procedures.

Ray explained that upon landing at Delhi’s T2 terminal, passengers were directed to exit via a ramp instead of an aerobridge, despite wet weather conditions.

“Halfway down the ramp, my right foot suddenly slipped on a moist patch,” he said. The fall left his ankle shattered, with a visibly dislocated bone. Sharing a photo of his swollen leg, he described the excruciating pain and the immediate assistance he received from a fellow passenger.

Indigo staff ferried him in a wheelchair to the airport clinic, where the severity of his injury became clear. Ray stated that he required surgery to insert a plate and screws into his ankle, resulting in hospitalisation, prolonged recovery, and significant expenses.

However, his complaint on the AirSewa portal was met with an unsatisfactory response. According to Ray, Indigo denied that the ramp was slippery, insinuating that the accident was due to his own carelessness. "They essentially implied I must be the idiot who can't walk down ramps since no one else fell that day," he said.

The incident has left him unable to walk unaided since August, with a recovery timeline stretching into the next year. He accused Indigo of avoiding the use of aerobridges to cut costs and claimed to have found evidence of similar accidents involving slippery ramps.

In his posts, Ray urged passengers to be cautious when using Indigo’s ramps, suggesting better lighting and improved ramp surfaces as immediate solutions. “Please pray they put some lights along the ramp, remove rubber mats, and stop avoiding aerobridges,” he said, warning others to avoid the ordeal he endured.

Indigo Responds to Passenger

Denying, the passenger's claims, the airline said that they found the ramp to be "dry and on perfect working condition, being used by numerous other passengers without any issue reported."

"We deeply regret the inconvenience experienced by our customer during his travel last August. Our ground staff offered immediate support and helped the customer with medical attention. Notwithstanding this fact, as gesture of goodwill, we shared a full refund of the air ticket shortly after the incident, which was swiftly accepted by the customer," a statement released by the airline read.