Week 1520 - Schrödinger’s Airline: The Indian Flyer’s Free Will (Conditions Apply)

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

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I just canceled my Indigo Mumbai-Dubai flight in Jan and rebooked on Emirates. I don’t think I want to fly Indigo for a few months, even though it is possible their situation may stabilize in a few days. 

Indigo has held a nation hostage, either willfully as some conspiracy theories seem to indicate (in which case this unforgiving Govt will make its life miserable, which may turn out to be good for us), or unwittingly, in which case they are stupid and foolish and not to be ever trusted. So unless it is impossible, I will try and stick with Air India or Akasa in the near future, sticking to late morning or afternoon flights, hoping they don’t screw up as well and if they do, that there is enough daylight time to at least get out of the airport.

After seeing videos of people screaming at the hapless and helpless ground staff of Indigo, you realize two things; first, we are still uncouth and vile people, who fully knowing that the staff at the counters has no control over the situation will still vent and rage at these young kids and traumatize them for life and second, we don’t matter as customers/passengers in most service industries, especially airlines and airports. 

This lack of empathy is especially true of Indigo, something I wrote about in 2014, 11 years ago and has been beautifully brought out in Jaspal Bhatti’s short comic snippet.

What is galling really is the utter lack of responsibility of those in charge. 

If there is a patient issue at any of my centers, a senior person or I will always step in/be available, if the problem doesn’t get sorted out at the front desk/junior manager level. When there is a flight delay or cancelation, senior people are never around, letting their ground-staff face the brunt of passenger anger. 

I faced a similar problem in Aug last year. There was a sudden downpour and the tarmac at Mumbai T2 was flooded. No flight could land and my 7 PM Indigo to Bhopal showed continuous delays until at 2 AM they canceled it. There was just no one around to take responsibility or to answer questions or to even allow some of us to leave the airport (you need to be signed out by an airline staff member at security and then once more at the airport entrance). What I could not understand is that these are not unusual occurrences and there should be a standard SOP/playbook for managing these scenarios, but they never seem to get implemented and all we see is chaos around us. No one gives you the correct information and then there is no one to help.

It is not just Indigo, the same is true of Air India, a situation we faced when we were traveling back from Kochi earlier this year. While Flighty the app showed the flight to be canceled (and I should have just booked another flight on another airline ASAP), I made the mistake of asking ground staff and they kept saying “delayed”, until they canceled, but by which time there were hardly any seats available on the other airlines.

Lufthansa screwed us in 2016 where a storm led to a cancelation of our flight from JFK in New York to Munich. They were just clueless and we were left on our own, having to pick up our luggage from the counter and then finding a cab and then a hotel almost 30 minutes away because the other airlines had already made arrangements for their passengers in the airport hotels. 

Why isn’t there an SOP that just works like clockwork 1, 2, 3…? 

Jet Airways was different and I wrote about its customer service in 2014. So was Kingfisher and perhaps for passengers the period from 2005 to 2012 was one of the best for air travel. You need competition, not a duopoly and it was a mistake to let Jet Airways and Kingfisher collapse and recently for Vistara, which had become my favorite airline, to be folded into Air India. Air India is Air India…just there…neither good, nor bad, to be tolerated because you need it and you just hope it all works out. 

Thankfully there is enough competition with international travel that airlines need to stay on their toes and offer good service, though Air India has screwed up so many times with  friends and family, the dictum is to never fly Air India internationally. 

Imaging our choice. Don’t fly Indigo locally. Don’t fly Air India internationally. 

Most of our hospitals are similar, converting “patients” into “customers”. The only focus of every corporate hospital is to make profits for its shareholders and promoters…if a patient benefits that’s great, but if the profits have to come at the patient’s expense (literally and figuratively), so be it.  The Hobson’s choice is everywhere. Take it or leave it. Stay at home, don’t travel or travel at your own risk. Do what you can to remain healthy, but if you fall sick, cross your fingers and hope that the doctors and hospitals you have chosen will do good by you, without impoverishing you. 

It was supposed to get easier and better…it just gets harder and harder!