REFLECTIONS

The national carrier is at it again. Despite the tall claims and the much publicized merger with Indian, the services provided by Air India continue to lag amongst the worst in the world. At this rate they are going to lose the even current crop of loyal customers that they have. At least they should know how to behave with passengers. Air hostesses seems to stop just hort of spanking passengers at times. What the hell is going on?

Just google for “Air India Lost Baggage” and you will be lost in a list of myriad list of links, all discussing woes about trying reclaim lost baggage/compensation from AirIndia. But the people at Air India could not bother less. This is probably the bane of the Public sector in India. Nobody cares as long as you have job security, and it is one of the most compelling reasons to privatize the airline to make it more competitive.

My personal experience on travelling with Air India has not been a pleasant one either. The only reason that hordes of students – like me – travel Air India is because of the extra baggage allowance for students going to the United States for studies for the very first time. And they prefer it second time is because they usually have the cheapest fares by about 50-100 dollars – a substantial sum for someone who is yet to start earning.

I had booked a flight from Chicago to Bombay via London, and was coming by the reverse route during the month of August’07. Firstly, there was no communication from Air India regarding the baggage allowance at London. Only one piece of hand baggage is allowed at Heathrow, something I came to know while I was standing in the queue to get my boarding pass. Having checked in my baggage at Indianapolis, it left me with the taskof fitting a laptop bag into my hand luggage.While waiting for the flight I checked on their website – there is no information regarding this limitation on the Air India website, just one rag of photocopied paper next to the start of the queue.

While I somehow managed to fit my laptop bag inside the hand luggage that I was carrying, it was above the weight limit and hence I was forced to check in the hand luggage I wanted to carry with me. Since the laptop bag was small, I was not permitted to even carry my camera in its pouch separately. I was nervous about having to check in my small electronics stuff at the airport, and as it turned out, for good reason. When I got my luggage in India, all my bags were half opened and pieces of cloth hanging out from those unopened pieces of luggage. Still I was like what the heck! that is not unusual for India. But when I opened my bags and tried to reach for the camera to take pictures of my reunion with my family, I was shell-shocked to notice that my camera was missing!!

I immediately mailed Air India regarding this, but have yet to receive any response from them till date, more than three months after I mailed them my complaint. However the story was far from over as I still had to fly back via the same airline.

Something Positive

The very first thing I noticed when I got onto the flight was…… was…….. was……… Individual screens for all passengers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG! was I dreaming?? This can’t really be true! In Air India?? WOW!!!!

….And the resultant negative

No no I knew I was not dreaming when a few minutes earlier I realized that some of the screens were not working at all. Others did not have functional remotes. Now THATS more like Air India.. Fortunately I was not amongst those unlucky few who had to read and re-read through the trash 50 page magazine for the next 22 hours of the flight. During the flight, half the touch screens were not working.

This is just half the torture story. The other half was played while coming back. The flight was delayed by 6 hours. Although I was not complaining about getting a chance to spend a few more hours with my family, it meant that I would miss my connecting flight to Indianapolis. This meant that I had to spend the night at Chicago airport. What was the compensation for that? A $7.50 food coupon! And of course I was given the option of using any of the numerous couches at the airport for a nice long snooze.

This attitude of Air India seriously needs to change if they are to truly become an international airline.Numerous airlines of our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia have much better airlines. Heck, I reckon even the PIA has better service. This creates a very bad impression about the quality of air services in a country when the sole national carrier is operating so pathetically. No doubt the situation is bound to improve as the private carriers get permission to fly on international routes in the coming months, but this might sound the death knell for Air India. Or just might spur them into action. Jet Airways did the same thing with Indian (then Indian Airlines) and the reaction from Indian was nothing short of woeful. Hopefully things will be better this time round. However nothing less than sweeping changes are going to bring back things in order.