Air Vistara — unethical, unprofessional, arrogant, rude and subjugating staff caused deboarding of 13 members

Address:

Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, 201301

Having sent a detailed mail and reminder of the whole incident (Enclosed below) we were never acknowledged and no receipt of our complaint was registered. Forget about reimbursement, customer support at air vistara do not have a basic courtesy of responding back to such a serious complaint about their rude staff and problem faced by their customers.

Background :
• we had a booking of 13 people (Consisting of 4 senior citizens and 3 children aged 3, 12, 12) on two pnr nos. Jyuuhv and jzu87w for travel on 03/11/2019 from delhi to indore
• being a large group, we checked in early online on 01/11/2019 (As soon as the check ins were opened by air vistara)
• we reached the baggage drop queue at 5.30 am for the flight no. Uk-913 departing at 6.55am (So close to 85 minutes before the flight time)
• we were all standing in the queue waiting for our turn and finally our bags were tagged by the counter at around 6.25 am (After standing for almost 55 minutes and 30 minutes before departure)
• after this we proceeded for security check and urgently rushed to boarding gate including putting the senior citizens in an airport vehicle.
• we reached the gate at around 6.50am, the aircraft was still at the gate but we were not allowed to travel
Problems faced on account of air vistara:
• no one attended or guided people in our queue for any kind of priority assignment
• no announcement was made in the baggage drop queue for prioritising the departure of passengers for any flight that was to leave shortly
• the counter was clearly short staffed, there was no one to assist the lady at the counter regarding baggage tagging. She was requesting the boys from other counters and also her female colleague at the other counter to help her in tagging bags
• the lady at the counter was facing system hangup / lock down / non-access due to which she was having to call again and again for unlocking of her system
• it took her almost 10 minutes to clear us and our bags (Despite the fact that we had our printed boarding passes with us and all our ids ready)
• since the poorly functioning counter had already consumed most of our crucial time both in the queue and at the counter – we were expecting that someone from the airline would be there immediately after security to attend to our large group and coordinate with the boarding gate – but no one was there
• there was absolutely zero assist from air vistara at all points
Air vistara staff’s tactics/responses :
• you are supposed to be here 20 minutes before departure
O the fact that you have cleared us only 30 minutes earlier from your counter – thereby leaving us just 10 minutes to clear security and reach your gate (Gate no 51) is irrelevant to air vistara’s staff
• we called your no. The customer rep at the gate kept repeating “we called you” and gave us a wrong number on which they called.
O the fact that the mobile phone would be under x-ray scanner at 6.40 – is not even in the list of air vistara staff’s first 50 reasons as to why customer could not respond
O when everyone is rushing to the boarding gate, do they have the time to check their phones for missed calls?
• the aircraft departure cannot be delayed
O that is fine but who caused the delay? And if we would pick up the phone then would it have been fine to delay the aircraft?
• we were met at the departure counter by mr dinesh mathur who had pretty ‘stiff behaviour’. We explained the whole narrative to him and he told us to go onto the counter where the needful would be done.
• we were led to mr azad mishra at the ground counter: this person is a pioneer in customer neglect, and off course he doesn’t give a damn about customers.
O we had a long discussion (In bits & pieces, as his phone plays much more important role than customer standing in the front with him) and outlined all the above facts to him. There was another family who missed same flight but he was treating them like abandoned cart, so we knew what to expect.
O he vehemently kept denying the above mentioned reasons for delay saying that it is our job to reach the gates
O he had no explanation of why the counters were working so slow or why there was absolutely no assist and no announcement at any stage.
O he had no explanation of why it should take close to 1 hour in the bag drop queue
O mr mishra kept pretending that he is checking the timings stated by us – but he did not do it even till the end
O instead of realising the state of our state of agitation – he kept giving veiled threats to call the security, wow!! We immediately became abandoned carts, of course no surprise.
O mr mishra deliberately kept going away from attending us or resolving the issue – to use delaying tactics and to test the patience of the group
O deliberate time-wasting tactics were employed by him. Even the lady (Ms jyoti gupta) sitting at his counter said i do not have his number (Is that even possible) and did not call him to the counter
O though we clearly asked mr mishra to refer us to someone senior who had the authority to take a decision on this – he gave us judgement that there is no point doing that, because he knows what will be the decision by anyone at senior level. Wow free astrologer at the counter.
O mr mishra said that since we were travelling on a lite fare – he could do nothing for us
O it was clear from mr mishra’s behaviour that regardless of the fairness of our situation – he will not take an unbiased decision about his staff / airlines’ incompetency as it might probably result in someone getting fired or fined by air vistara.
O highly unprofessional with very rude and arrogant behavior. We stood their waiting for him on the counter after he asked us to wait as he was busy with other boarding, when he returned asked us “why you guys are waiting” i told you i can’t do anything for you.
O i forgot to mention “the gem of airline customer support” at the counter ms jyoti gupta, it seems that she has learnt her rude behavior & working from the best mr azad mishra. Her qualities were: being arrogant, pretending to be unaware, but as soon as mr azad came she had all the worldly explanations that why we should not stand there.
O just humble request if any senior person from air vistara reads this message “please do not hire or post people like them at least on the counters “where there is a maximum requirement of customer support and these people are useless.

Resultant:
• due to air vistara staff’s behaviour we had to rebook the whole journey with air asia for immediate travel on the same day and spent an additional rs 80, 000 approx
• we had to spend additionally on meals at the airport for everyone
• the kids and senior citizens were without food/water for a long period
• we were unable to understand our mistake and therefore the whole group faced severe mental anguish and trauma due to their staff’s behaviour

Questions and request to air vistara :
• what was our mistake??
O we paid up in advance
O we checked in time
O we reached on time
• we had great belief in tata group’s ethical working but this experience and their response was totally unethical
• it seemed that being on a lite fare means that we will be discriminated against
• kindly investigate this fairly and in detail and punish the errant staff regardless of their cadre
• in all fairness there was no fault from our side – so we request a complete reimbursement of the expenditure that we had to incur (We will provide all details if required) on account of poor working by your staff at that point of time causing us to miss our flight
And please have the decency of acknowledging customer complaints as it is highly unethical not to even listen to your customers while your staff is making them miss their flights