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Pakistan has a deep culture of bribing. Whether you need to get a child admitted to a school or an adult employed, you need resources to get it done. Pakistani airports are no exception to this culture. People are mistreated, abused, and wrongly accused just because they refuse to give bribe to the airport employees. Recently such an incident occurred with a Pakistani born US citizen who was traveling with a 5-month-old infant from Lahore to New York.
The female passenger was traveling through Turkish Airlines and was waiting to board the flight no. TK715 from Lahore to Istanbul and later on TK1 from Istanbul to New York when she had to go through a traumatizing experience.
Her luggage was tagged and she got the boarding cards for herself, her 5 months old baby and her husband. She was waiting to board when a Turkish airlines employee “Danial” approached her and said you can’t take your carry on luggage with you on the flight. She replied that she is allowed a hand carry and a personal item to carry on the flight and as they are 3 people and have 3 hands carry, in addition to her shoulder bag and baby’s diaper bag, she can take another personal item. She further said that she carried the same amount of carrying on luggage from New York to Lahore. Mr. Danial refused to listen to her and asked her to give him $240 as bribe money.
She said she is not carrying that much money. At this point, Mr. Danial asked her to show their boarding passes. And what happened next, she has never imagined before. Mr. Danial ripped the boarding passes of the family and said now you will pay $3000 in order to travel. She was shocked, in a state of helplessness with an infant who was restless because of an overnight stay at airport and hunger, she ran from one counter to another counter, but no one helped the family. They could hear their names announced but that criminal Danial and another unidentified employee of Turkish Airline didn’t let them board the flight. He later threatened her that she cannot do anything about it.
He was right! She was stranded at the airport when Turkish Airline closed their counter and left, with no apology, no refund, nothing at all. It was 7 am in Pakistan, one hour after her actual flight time, when she called her family in New York.
In desperation and anguish, her family in New York called Turkish airline customer service repeatedly. Just to hear that passenger refused to board the flight.
Can anyone answer this question that who would refuse to board the flight after traveling 8 hrs by road, 4 hrs waiting at the airport and getting their boarding passes? She lost her boarding passes but she has the luggage tags which are the proof of her account.
She was stranded with a 5-month-old baby and her husband, in an unknown city, thousands of miles away from home as a punishment for not feeding the greed of those horrible, shameless vultures.
Who is going to answer this? There are CCTV cameras everywhere but Turkish Airline is not conducting a fair inquiry because it will expose their face to the entire world. Can anyone answer this question?
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