[Charles93]

My two friends and I booked 3 sits in the flight from Colombo to Chennai with Sri Lankan Airlines.
The takeoff was planned at 00:55am.

We arrived at Colombo airport at 11:00pm the previous day.
After passing the security check, we went to the queue for check-in at 11:30pm.

We waited for 30mn our turn for check in, at counter number 10. At 00:00, the person who was taking care of our checking checked our passports and printed our 3 boarding passes.

He then asked my friend to show his return ticket from Chennai to Paris. According to him, this was required as my friend had a business visa expiring in less than 6 months.

As Sri Lankan Airlines never advised us about this requirement, it was mandatory that my friend has an internet access in order to access his mails and be able to show the ticket.

From 00:00 to 00:30am, we literally begged multiple times the employee, as well as his manager, and all the present employees in the airport, to provide us an internet access in order to show the requested ticket.

Morever we were not able to use the airport wifi as the connexion was too slow.

None of the employees helped us in any way, in order to access internet or to find another way to proceed. The trainee in charge of our check-in kept on asking us to wait 5 mn for his help, while taking care of the other customers, without finally helping us in any way to solve the situation.

His manager was also present, and literally ignored our request. He even threatened us to call the airport security and to throw us out of the airport as we were becoming really worried and helpless.

Eventually, I managed to load the ticket of my friend on my own phone, and showed it at 00:30am to the employee. He then replied back that the gate was already closed and didnt let us proceed to the boarding, though we still had 25 mns before flight takeoff, and security checks were already passed before check-in.

We therefore had to change our three tickets for the next flight, paying extra charges, and waiting from 00:55am to 7:20am in the airport, with no compensation at all.

We tried to talk to the company airport manager about our situation, but it seems that she was not available for the whole time we were waiting...
We raised a complaint, but Sri Lankan Airlines never agreed to compensate us in any way.

In attachment is my conversation with the company customer care service.