A recent incident involving faulty business class seats on Singapore Airlines has resulted in a favorable verdict for an Indian couple. During a flight from Hyderabad to Australia that passed through Singapore, Ravi Gupta, the police chief from Telangana, and his wife encountered problems with the automatic recline function of their seats. Despite paying a hefty sum for their business class seats, the couple were unable to automatically recline their seats, causing inconvenience during their five-hour journey.
Following the incident, the couple complained to the airline but were offered frequent flyer miles as compensation, which they declined. Feeling that they had been treated badly and that the airline had failed to provide the expected level of service for business class passengers, the couple decided to take legal action against Singapore Airlines. The Telangana District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission ruled in favor of the couple and ordered Singapore Airlines to pay them $2,400 for the mental and physical pain caused by the faulty seats.
In response to the incident, Singapore Airlines acknowledged a problem with the automatic recline function of the seats and confirmed that only the manual recline function was operational during the flight. The airline expressed regret for any inconvenience experienced by Mr and Mrs Gupta and explained how challenging it is for them to re-accommodate customers due to full flights. Despite this mechanical problem, however, the crew offered assistance by manually reclining seats when needed. While this did not fully compensate for what they felt was a lack of automatic recline functionality in their business class experience, it did help mitigate some of their discomfort during their journey.