Flyers denied airport lounge access, issue sorted in evening
Times of India | 24 September 2024
Kolkata: Several hundred flyers have been denied lounge access at Kolkata airport due to an issue between the company that manages the lounge and the aggregator whose tie-up with various credit card companies enables their clients to use the facility. Sources at Kolkata airport said the problem was resolved late on Monday and that all credit and debit card holders who are eligible for access can use the lounge at Kolkata airport from Tuesday.
Such has been the extent of the trouble that Travel Food Services (TFS), a food and beverages master-franchisee that manages the lounge in Kolkata, issued a statement on Monday threatening legal action against DreamFolks, the middleware IT platform that enables credit and debit card-based lounge access for the customers of banks and other institutions that buy from them.
Several passengers were quick to raise the issue on X. “Denied lounge entry at Kolkata Airport without any justification. Is this what we should expect from airport services?” posted a user named Saloni. Another user named Payal wrote: “Lounge entry denied at Kolkata Airport with zero explanation. Airport services should be held accountable”.
Sources said DreamFolks has some issues, causing lounge access for many bank customers to be denied since Friday. Some of the BFSI customers of DreamFolks include MasterCard, DinersClub, IDFC First Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, SBI Card, Kotak Bank, Axis Bank and AU Small Finance Bank.
Sources said the problem was caused by an outage in DreamFolks’ system that did not allow authentication of credit or debit cards in the POS terminal provided by DreamFolks.
Late on Monday, a TFS source told TOI the issue with DreamFolks regarding lounge access at Kolkata and Chennai airports had finally been resolved. Earlier in the day, the problem was sorted out at Adani airports that had also been facing the same problem.