Indigo Flight 6E354 from Kolkata to Hyderabad, departure
8.30p.m., February 24th 2014
At 6.30p.m. I got a message which said that the flight had
been rescheduled to 11.15p.m.
There was no explanation for the rescheduling at the
airport. There was no indigo staff at the airport who was designated
to alleviate the concerns of the guests.
At 9p.m., two indigo kids [staff] came and asked the guests
to collect dinner. Dinner was a cheese sandwich, a muffin, a kachori and
buttermilk. I wonder what percent of the Indigo staff eat such sumptuous
dinner! I beg ignorance, but I did not know that the four assorted, dumped, cold,
dry, something, thrown together in a box, items could classify as dinner.
In the meanwhile, we got another message from Indigo saying
that the flight was now rescheduled to 10.40p.m. There was a change in gate
number, which was not announced.
The two kids who were distributing the so called dinner
disappeared. While everybody waited for someone to come and announce boarding
for 10.40pm departure, 10.40p.m. came and went and there was no sign of any
indigo staff. The kids came back at 11p.m. and sat down and chatted and
laughed, while the tired guests watched. A few of us had woken up at 4a.m. or
5a.m., had full day meetings, had kids waiting at home, were concerned about
our safety upon arriving at Hyderabad airport and taking the cab home, the kids
laughed and chatted.
A few guests had had enough and demanded that a supervisor
come and explain the situation. Another kid came at 11.15p.m. (supposedly
senior to the other two), and to silence the crowd, announced boarding and then
made the guests wait in the bus.
Finally we boarded the aircraft at around 12.00 midnight.
Airhostesses [kids again] were laughing away with absolutely no sense of the
grim situation or the discomfort of the guests. The aircraft had mosquitoes.
Not one, not two, but the aircraft was full of mosquitoes. The way you find
them hovering over a drain or in slums. When a guest asked one of the
airhostesses to spray the repellant, she just ignored. When the request was
repeated again, she gave the logic that if she sprays the repellant, we will
all breathe it and it’s not good for our health. While technically I agree with
her, shouldn’t the airhostesses, or who-so-ever is responsible for preparing
the aircraft, take care of such details earlier? Do we pay thousands of rupees
to travel in such conditions?
The flight finally took off at 12.30a.m. and reached
Hyderabad at 2.30a.m. A few other women and I made our journeys home, in cabs,
alone. Does Indigo care? No. Did the incidence even register with the
management? No.
No comments:
Post a Comment