Jun 24, 2004 06:56 PM
3560 Views
(Updated Jun 25, 2004 11:11 PM)
No choice but to fly AI with Qantas (not too great either, but that?s another story) not flyin directly to India, so had to do the normal AI thingy, of flying Mumbai ? Madras ?Singapore and not directly to Singapore. I shouldn?t have eaten the food in the domestic sector cause I lost my appetite for the second sector (the Madras ? Singapore sector did have, it seems, better food). The second normal attribute of Air-India is the ?flight delayed?. Was expecting it anyways so came a bit late to the airport. No surprises there.
Our plane had not even arrived from wherever it had to come from (another normal delay for that specific flight). Point is don?t worry if you are personally late for your Air-India flight at the airport ? The flight will be late, so relax, it WILL be a torturous flight ahead.
Plane did arrive and it was a sorry sight. Have no clue how old the plane was but it looked pretty old A310-300 airbus. The seats were very uncomfortable and was in a desperate need of refurbishing. All the loos don?t work (If you transit Singapore ? have a shower and the necessities there ? You will have to)
And finally, what happened to the 400 new ?Young? staff recruited. I had the oldest ?hags? serving me.(Let me clarify - I don?t want ??Chicks?? - I never use that term anyway - just that after a certain age both male/female hostess should be shifted to ground - I get all the negative ratings because of this - all women take it personally). Luv sleeping thru my flights and had this aunty of an hostess waking me up and handing me the immigration forms. Gives me the wrong forms for foreigners and then asks ?Are u Indian? in a manly voice, ?Duh, you freakin musumbi, what do you think??? This all happened when I was woken up from my sleep. I think all these ?aunty hostess? need a lesson in good manners and some accent training (get some from our call centers - I ain?t talkin an american or english accent, but atleast an accent from good bbay).
The decent airhostesses I would believe are on the Western route flights. On the return journey, the hostess down my aisle forgot to give me my food, when I requested the one of the other aisle for my food, she gives it to me, but with a question ?How Come, You go to toilet? ? This with that horrible accent. And I didn?t, she just missed me. Throughout the flight, had this steward announcing something and ending with the airline website to be visited. His www, was hilarious, all in that malayalee accent. He should actually go - W and yet another W and yet another W dot air india dot com. This was repeated a 100 times before landing. Hilarious. And why do the stewards in our aircraft have moustaches????? So passé. Look like villagers.
I don?t think they show any movies or anything. No music either with the ?pipe? contraption headphone not working. So there is nothing to do but sleep. As usual with Indians, there will be some passengers who think the aircraft being their own home, so will talk loudly, jog down the aisle like its joggers park and will mess the whole plane up!!
Air-India used to have a great name in the 80?s and why have fallen down so badly. My Uncle still swears by them (but he flies first class). First of all they need to recruit some new and young flyin staff. Give Voluntary retirement option to the hags.
The airline has one the highest plane to employee ratio in the world, and salaries is most often the biggest expense in any company. Use the savings to refurbish the planes (Atleast have working loos), redesign the seats ergonomically, have side head rests. Get some entertainment on board, even if it does not mean personal screens have LCD screens in different parts of the aircraft.
If the aircraft is late, announce the same to the passengers and reason for the delay. No point announcing the plane is delayed ONE HOUR AFTER like it was in my case. The good planes, 747-400?s are used in the London ? New York sector, and in no way I?m I gonna fly these long sectors in air-india to experience them, but they should use these planes for the Singapore and hongkong sector too. Recruit equally, on merit and not on caste. India will never go forward if we have ?Reservations? in any sector. Well all the above is easier said than done, but until and unless done, Air_India will go down and not fly high. I will surely help AI, in whichever way I can, except for the part of being their passenger.
Air-India is proposing a low cost airline ? WHAT THE HECK IS THAT. None of the essentials in the normal fare flights work in the first place, so how and where can they cut cost . Might be parachutes under your seats rather than life jackets ;-) If you do not have a choice in flying Air-India, THINK it will be the worst flight ever, and then u?ll be fine. As for me will stick to BA for time to come.
For ur info : in my opinion I still state that ??United?? in the states is the worst airline. Some of their planes were in a bad condition - One seat in a plane had masking tape all over it . Food??? They don?t give any - pop and pretzels is all u get. They are almost bankrupt - I wonder why. Even Osama?s idiot friends prefered ??American Airlines?? to United.
