Goons and conmen dressed as employees. Review on Vistara

Please avoid this airlines at any cost unless you want to face harassment of criminal nature/ rude employees ganging up and getting you framed and harassed falsely, extorting extra money from you by rejecting your check in luggage and forcefully adding it to your hand baggage. Being a Jet privilege platinum member sharing my experience on 13th Aug first hand. This is the copy to the email sent to vistara customer service, AAI and consumer forum.

AIRLINE PNR: Z2A3E4

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Have been seriously harassed by your staff at chandigarh airport yesterday afternoon. These people(1 man+1 woman) were present at the check in luggage x Ray counter between 1:15 pm -3pm. They were working under the supervision of one of your employees by the name of Alok.

Proceed of events:

1. During my course of baggage x Ray they had asked for my copy of ticket'out of the way' which is not a part of the standard protocol or was mentioned anywhere in the airport/check in counter. When I cross questioned regarding the validity/authorisation of the same the reply I received was "they are in charge and I was free to leave my baggage there or cancel my ticket if I wished to. But they will not show me any authorisation letter or express instruction for this out of the way checking."

   
   




2. I decided to stay put on my decision of not showing my ticket without any express notice or letter of authorisation against this unjustified immature and crass behavior of your "Tata group airlines" and decided to proceed with carrying my check in baggage as cabin luggage without getting the x Ray done.

   
   




3. By the time I reached the check in counter from the x Ray counter, I clearly overheard the instructions coming in over the walky to the check in counter lady to prevent me from carrying my handbaggage. To this the lady at the check in counter asked me to weigh my baggage and disqualified it under weight grounds. I had no other option but to check it in.

   
   




4. When I returned to the x Ray counter, I was asked to x Ray my other hand baggage as well which again wss a redundant activity and not asked of me earlier designed at simply harassing me. My reaction to this was “is this a circus going on?”. This made the male employee at your check in counter threaten to hit me and call me a ‘bastard’. All this can be checked at the cctv footage of the x Ray counter and happened in the presence of Mr. Alok.  Is this the way your employees are trained to address flier issues?  As a natural reaction to the word “bastard” I reacted with equal profanity and your team Ganged up against me threatening to deplane me.  The lady started to say that I misbehaved with her while the reality is, the only interaction that ever happened with her was in point#1 where I asked her to show a notice/authorisation letter to check the tickets.

   
   




5. They call in the airport security with the false allegation that I have misbehaved with the lady and verbally abused the other male staff while the reality is, all I asked from her was the letter of authorisation and I was abused at by the male staff initially and was threatened to be beaten up.

   
   




6. The security official tried to work out a middle path by requesting me to write an apology letter which I had to succumb to because it was already 2:30 pm and I had no option of validating the situation through cctv footage but to board the flight since it was an official tour ticket booked by my office.

   
   




7. After the entire episode these two staff members under question still refused to run a security check on my baggage to check in and I had to pay Rs. 960 in accommodating the extra weight of my cabin baggage. Surely you’d have the record of the same.

   
   

A few questions out of the entire harrowing episode:

A. Is this the way vistara and the tata group handles customer issues by ganging up against them with false allegations/profanities/threat of bodily harm?

B. Is this a policy followed by your airlines for extracting additional revenue from your fliers?

My personal feedback on this entire episode:

A. I curse myself for not creating a video and going viral over social network on the entire scheme of events. However the cctv footage can be checked for the entire episode and the way it happened. It was just a matter of chance that I was in an official tour and the tickets being bought by the office prevented me from changing it altogether and pursue the matter further with cctv footage as evidence

B. This has been my most harrowing experience ever on a flight/airport ie being framed as a miscreant by a bunch of abusive/ cowardly /incompetent Tata group of employees who gang up against a passenger with false allegations when they are asked to produce basic authorisation/notice for an out of the way process. I happen to fly atleast 8 to 10 times a month and am a JP platinum member. If something called flying records exist, it can be cross verified.

C. This is the last time me or my colleagues would ever be flying on a vistara flight(approximately 15 colleagues of mine travelled in the same flight and witnessed/got involved in the situation first hand) so you've lost around 16 regular fliers excluding their families.

D. Have launched an official complaint on this regard with the AAI as well since the AAI personnel at the airport was privy to the entire episode that happened.

E. I intend to take this matter higher up within Vistara/Tata Group and legally till I see a definite end to this nuisance putting other people at risk.

The relevant documents of this forgettable travel experience are attached herewith. But all I can say is I wouldn’t let Vistara / Mr. Alok and his team wiggle out of this cheaply.

Best Regards,