I just did happen to travel using our 'flagship' carrier Air India and here's the account of what happened. After reading through this blog, I truly hope you'll never venture to fly with this airlines (but still owing to few reasons you'd still book it right?!) (At least I did take oath never to fly them again -- hmmm...now that two troubled airlines are joining, what can you expect?)
Here goes my itenerary.
Forward Journey: London to Bangalore
Well, the drama did start right at the LHR airport on 18th June (forward trip to Bangalore) -- the flight (AI 0112) which was supposed to take off at 9.45AM had no sign of leaving up until 12.00AM and there was no word from any Air India official why the delay. It eventually took off at around 12 noon (same happened with my wife when she travelled in Dec '06). The inflight announcements were so feeble that I couldn't hear anything - it sounded like whispers and captain had no energy to speak louder! (how will he fly then?!). As we all aware the inflight service was second worst to none. Eventually I came to know that the flight was originally from NYC to LONDON to DELHI to MUMBAI --> Change over in Mumbai to Domestic which will take me Bangalore -- I nearly fainted just by hearing this!
When I booked my tickets with travel agent (Southall travels) they never did mention that the flight will be via Delhi - I'd have never taken this flight then. Please check with your travel agent how many stops (just like you used to do when travelling in remote places via state transport buses in India) before you book with them.
The ordeal starts right at the starting point at Heathrow due to delay by half a day followed by aircraft landing in delhi instead of mumbai and then to mumbai with about 10 hours of delay and finally missing the Bangalore flight -- In all these mess I lost baggages and waited for about 6 hours at the belt in mumbai as the baggage dept kept telling bags will appear in 15 mins and announcement came up repeatedly for 6 hours -- but without the bags.
Ultimately bags have arrived but we needed to obtain a new ticket to Bangalore from so called Air India Assistance Counter
which wore a deserted look as we waited for nearly an hour only to find none attending the desk and we had to eventually go in search of finding an Air India officer who had the authority to issue me a ticket on Jet Airways!! (Finding the right Air India officer who had the authority to make such changes was another nightmare story to tell). All this is for the forward journey.The return: Bangalore - Mumbai - Delhi - London!
The return journey also started in the same fashion. The flight should have taken off 6.55pm from Bangalore -- but it actually took off at around 9.30 for no apparent reason. The flight from Mumbai should have took off at 2.55AM and should have reached Heathrow at 11.30 -- But again here also we had a huge delay and finally it took off from Mumbai at 9AM. No food and no water up until then. The only food store near gate17 charged Rs.90 only for two slices of crap bread sandwich. Needless to say, flight could only reach London by around 5.30-6pm local time as against official time of 11.30am arrival.
Now imagine the repetition of the above ordeal for 2 consecutive trips - one for myself and another one for my family !
So, I urge the individuals planning to travel using this carrier to think thrice (not enough!) before booking their flights. Now that two troubled airlines are merging, what improvements can we expect from them?
