Low-cost carrier Deccan has been asked to pay Rs 50,000 each as compensation to seven passengers for offloading them from a Calcutta-Agartala flight despite their having confirmed tickets.

The State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, which awarded the penalty last week, asked the airline to also refund the fare.

Debashish Chatterjee, Dipten Chatterjee, Kalidas Banerjee, Kunal Banerjee, Subhasish Chatterjee, Debjani Chatterjee and Samu Chakraborty were part of the same group and had bought tickets nearly five months in advance for a flight that was to take off on March 4, 2007.

They checked in on the day of the journey and even boarded the plane, DN-675, only to be asked to disembark. Airline officials claimed that the tickets that were booked on October 17, 2006, had been “cancelled”.

Dipten, for whose marriage they were all going to Agartala, took another airline’s flight and the rest left the next day.

When the group moved the consumer court, the airline blamed the “cancellation” of their tickets on a software glitch. Deccan later offered Dipten complimentary return tickets for him and his wife to any destination where the airline operates. To the other six , it promised return tickets to a destination from Calcutta. The offers were rejected.

Aloke Chakrabarti, the president of the disputes commission, and member Shilpi Majumder said the airline should have tested its new ticketing system before making it operational. Deccan officials were unavailable for comment.