Passengers en route from India to the UK claim airline staff forced them to pay $31,000 or their plane would not leave the tarmac in Vienna.
A tiny Austrian airline that allegedly last month forced passengers into a whip-round in order to complete their journey from India to Birmingham filed for bankruptcy yesterday.
Comtel-Air, majority-owned by Indian businessman Bhupinder Kandra, has debts of 1.2 million euros ($A1.5 million) and also faces damages claims for delayed and cancelled flights, the Austrian creditors' protection agency KSV said.
"The fate of the company is currently uncertain. If no investor is found soon, then the firm will ... have to be closed down very soon," KSV said.
More than 180 passengers on a chartered Comtel Air flight from Amritsar in north India were stranded on the tarmac in Vienna last month during a refuelling stop after being told the airline "ran out of cash to fund the last leg of the trip".
Passengers said the airline threatened to remove their luggage from the plane if they did not pay the £20,000 ($31,200).
The passengers, who reportedly paid about £500 ($780) each for their flight, refused to get off the plane in a six-hour stand-off.
The dispute was finally resolved when Austrian police were called and the passengers were escorted to ATMs to draw money.
The airline denied passengers were asked to pay for the fuel, but in a video filmed by a passenger on board they can be heard getting told "if you want to get to Birmingham, you have to pay"
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