Air India — Pathetic Service, Negligence & Non-existent Hospitality

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

Dear Air India, First of all let me express my deepest gratitude to you for having brought me safely to Mumbai from Delhi. I was quite skeptical about my mortality from what all I had witnessed yesterday. I'm talking about flight AI-317 from Delhi to Mumbai which was scheduled to depart at 11 PM (at least on paper) on the 20th of April, 2015. 1) CONFUSION AT THE BOARDING GATE: Firstly, there was major confusion at your boarding gate (number 20). At around 10 PM, the screen next to the gate mentioned ‘Gate Open’ for flight AI 317 to Mumbai. Upon seeing this I went to enquire about it at the adjoining desk only to be rudely told “Please be seated, we will do the needful and inform you when the gate opens”. Huh, why even have a screen in the first place then if people have to personally come and announce all this in a so-called ‘silent’ airport? Next up a ground staff lady comes up to the boarding gate and invites us to come up. After we all have assembled there, another announcement asks us to sit down again! Now for some strange reason this lady still lets us through the gate even though the announcer is constantly announcing that the gate is only open for business class passengers first and economy passengers will follow later! Anyway since I had already crossed the check post I went on ahead to the aircraft. 2) TAKE OFF TIME The flight which was scheduled to depart at 11 PM still had people boarding it at 11 PM! In the age when all other airlines (like indigo and Jet) are trying their best for earlier take offs; here we have AI behaving like the typical Maharaja and always doing things at their dreary speed. Competition is reserved only for the private sector it seems. 3) LUGGAGE MANHANDLING From my seat 10F I could also see the way ‘our luggage’ was being manhandled by your loading staff. It’s like they don’t even care for people’s belongings and kept throwing the bags on the conveyor belt like grain sacks. I suspect that some of your loaders are good enough to potentially make it to the national basketball team! The dull thuds of the bags were quite worrisome especially since I also had a bottle of pickle packed along with my other stuff. Fortunately for me nothing happened to it, but I’m quite sure that this wasn’t the case for many others. 4) AIR-CONDITIONING There was literally no Air-conditioning at all till the flight was well and truly in the air. I checked the time and it was 11.45 pm exact when the AC finally kicked in (and we were already in the air for almost 10 mins!) I can't even remember the last time that I was actually sweating on an airline and neither have I seen people having to ‘fan’ themselves on an aircraft with the safety booklet. 4) DAREDEVIL PILOT Your pilot Ms Seema Jamnani also seemed to be some kind of an adrenaline junkie since she made the flight hop once before the final liftoff. Even after taking off, she took a very wild u-turn. I have never seen an aircraft tilt so much, so much so the earth almost looked like a perpendicular wall! All these things made me feel that I wasn’t going to make it. In fact people were nervous all around and even the guy next to me who was deep in sleep throughout the take off woke up to take a stock of things! 5) HOSPITALITY You have truly learnt how to maintain a skeletal staff on the plane. I hardly saw any air hostess or cabin crew till the seat belt sign was finally switched off after takeoff. The strange thing was that the person next to me had opened the breakfast tray to place his backpack and was sleeping on it during takeoff! And neither did he fasten his seat belt. And there was a guy talking to his ‘jaanu’ on his cell phone while the plane was taxiing for takeoff. People also had their seats tilted. Now I can't even imagine something like this happening on a Jet airways or Indigo flight. Seriously pathetic state of affairs. No one was even bothered. Strangely people on board were not even complaining and seem resigned! 6) SAFETY VIDEOS Even the safety videos were fully pre-recorded. I always felt very irritated every time the same thing would be repeated on every aircraft. But this was the first time only a stock video was shown with no live demonstration. This made me actually feel very worried and insecure. Maybe it was because the probability (of me actually having to do those things to save my life) had gone up tenfold in this particular aircraft. 7) FOOD This may be the most trivial thing of all but the food was honestly terrible. Now I've never been to jail but this gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect there. The non-veg meal had no taste and it tasted like it had been kept for days and then microwaved in a hurry. There was a chemical aftertaste to the food. The pic was taken after I totally gave up trying to eat your food. No water was served on the flight except the bottle which was served with the meal. So I'm glad that I bought a bottle of water from the vending machine at the airport. Having stayed in hostels for most of my life, I'm not very picky about my food and can eat anything that is reasonably palatable; but this took it to a new level altogether. FINAL WORDS Now I used to travel extensively by Air India in the late 90s and early 2000s, especially for trips to Saudi. My last flight by Air India was in 2008 and I really can't believe what all has happened to it in a space of 7 years. I wasn't particularly dissatisfied or unhappy with their services back then. Now I know that Air India isn't doing well and is suffering major losses but then again neither am I surprised now. The staff also seem disinterested and demotivated. Probably the only reason why you even get passengers these days is because of the enormous population of this country and whenever you break prices. Else nobody in their right mind would ever opt for Air India. I'd rather travel by the ‘budget’ airlines offering paid meals and water rather than eat your stale food or experience your lethargic hospitality. The only reason I flew Air India this time around was since I had to book my tickets at a very short notice and your tickets were almost 2000 Rs less than the nearest player. I don't think that I will ever fly this airline again not even for a difference of 10k! Goodbye and good riddance!