Air India — Misbehavior of ground staff

Hello,
This is to bring to your notice, a complaint regarding the unprofessional and offensive behavior of your airport staff(Mr P. Chandra Bose) along with missuse of authority, at the Muscat international airport in Oman.

The incident took place on the 23rd of December'2016 at 8:30 pm (Oman time) at the check in counter for our flight-
AI 978 Muscat to Bengaluru.

Here is a description of the entire incident.
We waited in the check in line and a lady 2 passengers before us, was asked to leave in a very disrespectful manner shooing her away with his hand (treating her like a begger)
When our turn arrived, I enquired as to what the problem was, as she didn't speak a language that I or the staf[censored]nderstood; I found out she was asked to leave and prevented to receive her boarding pass, because she had excess baggage by 7-9kgs.
She was travelling alone, and didn't speak the language and didn't have enough riyals on her. The balance of money she had was only enough for about 3 kgs excess baggage.
She also didn't have any hand baggage on her. So I requested them very politely to accommodate this slight excess baggage as she doesn't have any hand baggage on her, which would have been very hospitable on their part. They said that's not possible and asked me not to interfere in the matter.
I told them that they showed very bad customer service by dismissing her offensively with their hand earlier, and should help the lady out a night before Christmas Eve, who's mostly going to meet her family for the holidays and who would miss her flight just because she was short of a few riyals.

My friend(Swetha) gave her hand bag to the lady so that she could accommodate some weight from the check in bag to hand bag.
And that's all that needed to be done!
Shift some weight. But the staff at the Air India check in counter, lacked that much courtesy to do the same. Because they did not care about a passenger missing their flight. And they had no training with hospitality or even basic decency of speaking with a woman, especially Mr P Chandra Bose- using his hand to gesture to leave.

This entire experience was unpleasant enough and thought a feed back would be most required, for which I asked Mr Bose his name. He responded with a sarcastic confidence and aggression and replied with his name.

Giving me dirty aggressive looks (which also took the smile of my face) he threatened to call security on me. He still had not checked the lady in by now, even after the weight got adjusted.
I told him he needs to check her in as there was only 70mins left for take off. But he instead prevented her from checking in, delayed other passengers in line, and called security on us because I decided to give a feedback about him and asked for his name.

His ego was clearly been damaged and he wanted to show us who's boss as he had been working there for over 20 years(so he can think that he owns the passengers)

Chandra bose spoke to the security police(from Oman) throughout in Arabic so that we won't understand and made us go to the side to react in an even more aggressive manner than when at the check in counter.
He tried to touch our passports and boarding passes.
He tried to intimidate us with his power of refusing us from boarding. Accusing us of interfering with his work(just because we helped out another passenger)
I don't even know if your staff can actually even refuse us boarding in their legal right when I have a valid ticket.
But for sure he was trying to delay us enough that we miss the flight and raise an issue with security.

He also warned us about not complaining against him, threatening again to refuse us boarding if we did.
Upon which I agreed to not complaint just so that we could make it for our flight.

Before boarding the aircraft, he intimidatingly shows us our boarding pass slip that was collected at the gate, to confirm our names as well, and again in a very threatening tone of voice. He tried to bully us throughout.

My friend and I felt threatened, harassed and intimidated by Mr P.chandra Bose along with the other staff with him at the counter and the security guard who seemed to also question us about asking for Bose's name.
I can't understand the power they(some Air India staff) think they have to go to such an extent of misbehavior and it would amaze me if they would be allowed to get away with it.

This has been my worst flying experience ever and have faced other difficulties with Air India in the past; but this incident was the worst of them.

My friend traveling with me (Swetha Harikrishnan) has already sent a formal complaint to your website, along with the Oman airport mail id. Have attached her letter of complaint Along with our ticket copy in this email.

Hoping to receive a response regarding the same at the earliest from your end.
We shall accordingly decide the next course of action to take, based upon your response in correcting the matter and an explanation regarding the behavior of Mr P. Chandra Bose.
Regards
Ami Shroff