Calcutta, Nov. 9: The next time you get dropped off at the airport tell your driver to wait till you’ve got a boarding pass. For, a ticket you had bought from an airline counter weeks before the flight may not be good enough.

This is what Mumbai-based Swapnesh Mehta learnt the hard way this morning. The lesson caused him a day’s delay and cost him Rs 39,000 for three fresh tickets. He had bought the original tickets for Rs 14,625 on August 29 at Mumbai airport.

Swapnesh, 34, arrived with his wife Sejal and son Smit at the check-in-counter of SpiceJet at Calcutta airport around 6.50am. Their flight to Mumbai was scheduled for 8.10am.

But the Mehtas were denied boarding passes by officials of the low-cost carrier who claimed that the tickets booked through their call centre had not been paid for.

Swapnesh had paid the full amount of Rs 14,625 at the airline’s counter in Mumbai two months ago, a confirmation of which was embossed on his e-ticket. But his argument cut no ice with those manning the SpiceJet counters as their was no record of payment in their online system.

Not carrying enough cash to pay for three fresh tickets — he does not use a credit card “on principle” — Swapnesh had to dial a friend to bail him out. Three new tickets for the Spice Jet flight tomorrow morning were bought for Rs 39,000 and the family was forced to check into a hotel near the airport. Swapnesh later lodged a complaint with the airport police station and also with the airport.

“We are probing his allegation and have asked our Mumbai office to look into it. But in our system, the tickets were ‘on hold’, which means that the payment was not made,” said a SpiceJet official.

Swapnesh had called SpiceJet’s call centre on August 28 and used the time limit booking system by which a passenger can book the ticket and pay the fare within a stipulated period, usually between 24 and 48 hours. If the payment is not made by then the booking is cancelled automatically.

“I was asked to pay the fare within 24 hours and so next morning I went to the airport counter of Spice Jet and paid Rs 14,625,” said Swapnesh.