Air India pilots, crew in fistfight at 30,000 feet

MUMBAI - A mid-air scuffle between pilots and crew of an Air India flight at the weekend did not endanger the 106 passengers on board, said a spokesman for the airline which has ordered an inquiry.

Two pilots and two crew members have been grounded following the incident on a Sharjah-Lucknow-Delhi flight, said Jitender Bhargava, which began as a heated exchange on a charge of sexual harassment against the pilots by a crew member.

Blows were also exchanged in the scuffle that spilled into the cabin late on Saturday night, according to media reports.

"At no stage was safety compromised. It was a clear case of indiscipline," Bhargava said.

"Our report is still awaited. We will decide on the course of action when it is ready," he said, adding that Delhi police were also investigating.

The ailing state-run carrier last week canceled dozens of flights when about 250 pilots went on strike to protest against plans to cut pay incentives as part of a broader cost-cutting exercise.

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Ship, Train to rescue Air India mess!!!

The Shipping Corporation of India and the Railways have decided to extend their services to Air India passengers stranded because of the ongoing executive pilots strike even as nine flights of the airline were cancelled here on Tuesday.

This was done on the initiative of Railway Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

“I have asked officials of the Shipping Corporation to take all measures to help the passengers stranded at Port Blair because of the strike,” Union Minister of State for Shipping Mukul Roy told The Hindu.

Two ships would set sail from Port Blair towards Kolkata and Chennai on October 1. The administration of the Shipping Corporation of India in Andaman and Nicobar had informed the passengers at the airport that they could board these ships, Mr. Roy said, adding another vessel was ready if the need arises.

According to a release from the Eastern Railway, “the Railway Ministry has made special arrangements for stranded passengers of Air India.” Computerised railway reservation counters and help desks were set up at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport at Kolkata.

The nation-wide strike by the executive pilots seriously affected services at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport here on Monday, when nine flights were cancelled, said an Air India spokesman.

The situation remained unchanged on Tuesday as the airline operated 14 flights with the help of line pilots, but had to cancel nine flights, including those bound for international destinations.

“We have given passengers prompt refunds or tried to accommodate the passengers on other airlines. Hotel accommodations have also been provided,” the spokesman said.

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Air india sucks ass!!!

Nov 16, 2004 08:34 AM
By: saigunturi
AIR INDIA SUCKS POOP and you know it! It is one of the s@*ttiest airlines in the world! The planes are very filthy on the inside. The seats are not at all clean- they look like people puked on them several times and nobody had ever cleaned them since yesteryear. And the airhostesses are some of the most snotty, stubborn, and obnoxious! Unfortunately, I flew nasty Air India again in 2003 after a 12-year boycott of the horrible airline. It is still as nasty as it was years ago, let me tell you that! Luckily, we are going to India in December, and this time we are flying Lufthansa. I’ve been on British Airways and Swissair, and those are also decent airlines, along with Delta. But Air India is one of the worst and filthiest! So I urge anybody who is planning on travelling to India soon not to go on Air India.

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The Shiite hits the fan!

Sat 14 Jan 06

Posted by Infidel J

Leaving the hellhole known as Bombay Airport
While we were going through the customs I heard an announcement that we should meet an Air India representative outside of customs. So we make our way to a crowd of people and sea of luggage surrounding this tiny desk. There is one guy behind the desk and about seventy people have surrounded him; there are no lines; kids are crying and people are pushing each other to get in front. I find out that this cattle-fest filled with confusion is about getting a voucher to get on the next flight.
My wife stands in the line or somewhere in the crowd and I guard the luggage and watch my son. After a few minutes I hear yelling and arguments between two passengers in the crowd; tensions are high and everyone wants to make it on the flight. This goes on for about half an hour; I can see the customs counter from where I’m standing and see more people being harassed and forced into paying bribes.
My wife gets to talk to the bald guy behind the desk; he gives her a voucher but tells her that our tickets are “not confirmed”. WTF? We already had boarding passes for the flight we missed. I confirmed the tickets on AirIndia.com myself. This airindia.com link shows that US passengers don’t need to reconfirm their tickets.
Air India was giving out vouchers to put people on Jet Airways flight for 10am. There was a 6am flight but everyone there would miss it. We tried to ask the idiot behind the desk about this “not confirmed” business and he didn’t have any other answers and repeated himself. He said you can stand in line for Jet Airways and if they have room they will take you.
So we stand in this line which is 10 feet away from this guy’s tiny temporary desk; Jet airways is scanning everyone’s luggage; we just came through an international flight still behind security; what’s the need to rescan the bags? There are two desks open and they’re moving people extremely slow. It took almost an hour to get our bags scanned and get up to the Jet Airways “transfer” desk to ask them if they have room for us. One hour standing in line at a US airport would have been paradise compared to this airport is a run down hellhole filled with mosquitoes, foul smell, and dripping pipes overhead. I wanted to assume it was just water. I wanted to take pictures but I was afraid that I might be detained and harassed. All of this including customs is happening in the same area; I can see the customs desks; luggage belts; and Jet airways counter from where I’m standing. The place is not bigger than a high school gym.
There are no public phones in the area so we can call and inform our family who might have come to the other airport to pick us up. The phones are outside the security and I didn’t feel like venturing out there because I might not be able to get inside.
There are restrooms that are being attended by multiple genitors who are there waiting for you to tip them; my wife took my son to the restroom and there were four female genitors inside, one of them asked “what do you want to do?”
Jet Airways employees told us that you’re not “our list” and Air India has not “confirmed you”. They said they could not do anything about it. I asked if they had room in the business class to which she replied “there is no business class” on our flights. I asked if there was a later flight, she said she can get me on a 4:55pm flight which was 12 hours away. So we are left with standing there like victim of Katrina hurricane in a very similar hellhole with no idea what’s going to happen next. The bald air India employee was no where in sight and there were a few other passengers with similar problems. We all met each other and I quickly understood what had happened. All of our last names were at the end of the alphabet. Air India bumped us all because there was limited seating on the Jet Airways flight and we were at the end of their list.
Any other airline would have remedied the situation by offering compensation to volunteers to make everyone happy. Instead we were lied to, discriminated against and they made us stand in line for hours with a toddler. They could have leveled with us; offered us accommodations; and confirmed us on a later flight. That could have saved us from the emotional rollercoaster and we could have gotten some rest. Air India doesn’t work this way; they don’t care about their customers; some bureaucrats make the decisions who don’t have a clue about customer service. They should be hit with a class action law suit and banned from providing service until they clean up their act

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The Worst Airlines: Air India (followed by Delta)

December 28, 2005

Posted by Adi
Nothing can compare to the utter stupidity that was the past two days. In fact, I am completely surprised that a company can mentally and physically destroy their customers yet still stay in business. I’ll get to this issue later, but for now, here’s my story.
My cousin was getting married in December, so about five months ago, my mom bought two tickets to India for herself and I. Basically we’d be flying to JFK airport in NY through Delta, and flying directly to India from there via Air India (with a refueling stop at Heathrow). So two days ago we set out. Unfortunately, everything backfired when Delta cancelled our flight to NY at the last minute, a few minutes before its departure. From there it was a mad scramble to try and catch another flight to JFK. However, because the weather was bad, Delta wasn’t flying anyone to JFK. Our flight was initially scheduled to arrive in NY at 4pm, and the Air India flight was scheduled to take off at 6:55pm. So unfortunately it looked like we were going to miss our Air India flight.
We talked to Delta and asked them what the best options were. We found out through all this that the Air India flight was also delayed. However, my dad was looking on the internet and was seeing a TON of Air India flights popping up that were similar to ours (our flight number was 112, other flights started showing up as 1112, and another one as 11112). Our flight, 112, on the internet, showed that it was departing on time. Delta, however, called Air India and learned that it definitely was delayed until 10:10pm, and there were no flights with numbers 1112 or 11112. One lady at Delta put us on a flight to Laguardia that would arrive at 8pm and said that we could take a shuttle from Laguardia to JFK. She left for a little bit, and after we called Air India and received numerous conflicting pieces of information, figured that we couldn’t make the Air India flight if it took off at 10:10pm. So another Delta agent put us on a morning flight the next day to JFK and tried to call Air India to reserve us seats on the flight the next day.
This is where Air India sucks. Air India hung up on Delta agents several times, and even told them once that the flight was delayed until midnight, and promptly hung up. Wrong information. When Delta tried to reserve seats for us, Air India said that economy class was full and that they would NOT give us seats in business class because we didn’t pay for them and it wasn’t their fault! Air India stated that they would put us on the waitlist and we can go to JFK the next day (yay) and see what happens.
So we decided to try our luck the next day. We went back down to baggage claim to collect our baggage for that night. Unfortunately, we ended up waiting in baggage claim for two hours. After trying to talk to some pretty rude Delta agents, we were able to get a hold of a friendly supervisor who found out that our baggage had been sent to Laguardia on that 8pm flight. Delta sends people’s baggage on flights even if they don’t get on the flight itself. That’s pretty smart.
So we went home, without any confirmation of our flight to India… and without our baggage. The next day we set out at 6am for our 7:45am flight. I was tired, pissed, and I needed clothes (that were resting happily in NY at that moment). We got to the airport, got on the 7:45am flight, and arrived at JFK at around 10am because of some delay. When we got there, we didn’t know wtf to do.. whether we should go to baggage claim and get our bags or go up to the ticket counter at Air India. The problem existed because we needed actual tickets to get past/to certain areas in the airport. So we grabbed a janitor and asked her what we should do. She almost finished answering our question when a Delta agent ran up, pushed her aside and yelled at her: “Don’t misguide them!”. Wow. The janitor got pissed off, cussed out the Delta agent, and walked off. So now the Delta agent started to “help” us, but only ended up yelling at us and being extremely rude. What is wrong with this picture? The janitor was nicer and friendlier than the Delta agent. We ultimately found our way to the baggage claim and a friendlier Delta agent there figured out that our bags had been sent automatically to Air India. Great. So now our bags had more confirmation for India than we did.
We went to Air India’s ticketing counter and found it to be closed. They only open at 2:30pm. So we grabbed something to eat downstairs and waited from 12pm to 2:30pm. Around 2:15, they started setting up the poles for the lines and the counters. At 2:30, we went up to wait at the counters so we could be the first people in line.
Air India is seriously the worst airlines. Delta is bad, but everyone, everyone at Air India is rude. They even lie to you from time to time or withhold information. While we were in line, an Air India representative ran up to us and yelled us, asking us “what we were doing in line”. We had been waiting for 7 hours for Air India to help us, and now they were telling us we couldn’t stand in line because no one was at the ticket counters. We didn’t even have a right to stand in line. Naturally, we ignored this. The guy came back and argued with us for a while, and finally he said that he would take us first if we just went back and sat down. So we did. At 3pm, after everything had been set up, the “kings and queens” of Air India arrived. Dressed in flashy saris and nice suits, the men and women at Air India enjoyed showing themselves off. They were the ticketing agents of Air India. They sat there for half an hour, talking and chattering with themselves, until finally they decided they were ready.
The ticketing counters opened and we were the first in line. We went up to the Air India ticketing agent and told him our entire problem. This man had a sly demeanor — he would respond without looking at us and occasionally he would say something as his eyes would wander around us. He seemed nice though. Unfortunately, he said that there was no way we could get a seat on the plane. Despite the fact that we had been waiting and our Delta flight the other day had been cancelled. He also said that we could be given our bags at any time, but we should wait until he figures out whether we would get on the flight. He put us on the waiting list and reassured us that we would eventually get on the plane.
Only problem was, the last flight back to Charlotte from JFK was at 5:45pm. And depending on whether or not we had our bags, we had to leave at 5:10pm from Air India’s counter or 4:30pm (to make it through security). We waited at Air India for another hour and a half until 4:45, when the Air India representative came back and told us that our 100% chance of getting on the plane had unfortunately dwindled to 1%. Oh well, he said. And then he walked away.
That was it. I told my mom that this was stupid, and we should just leave and go back to Charlotte before we miss the last flight. We went back to the man and asked him if we could get our bags and get the hell out of JFK, because Air India had failed us miserably. He said there was no way we could get our bags! WHAT?! He has purposefully LIED to us. What scum. So after yelling at him, he finally told his deputy — the man who had initially yelled at us to get out of line — to go downstairs with us and open the door to the India Air baggage room in the airport. So we ran downstairs at 5pm, 45 minutes before our Charlotte flight (we still had to go through security, mind you).
The door was locked. The guy had gone out for a coffee break. So people at Air India gleefully neglect their jobs. Customer service is awesome! We said screw it and ran out of Air India and toward Terminal 3, where our gate to Charlotte was. We were frustrated, tired, and upset that our trip to India had failed completely, thanks to Air India and Delta.
We ran through the airport, and arrived at Delta ticketing to grab our tickets. The agent ran us through security and eventually we made it to our gate. We finally got on the Delta plane back to charlotte and collected ourselves. Everything had ended in disaster, and our bags were still missing.
We learned on coming back home that the Air India flight we were supposed to take the night before had been delayed 24 hours! Passengers were sitting on the plane for a ridiculous amount of time, and the plane had been rerouted to Bombay instead of going directly to Delhi after the flight had taken off!
Also, what about those crazy flight numbers? Air India changes flight numbers depending on whether a plane is delayed or not. Wow. So since our plane, flight “112″ was delayed, on their website they added a flight “1112″ with the correct time, while leaving “112″ unchanged. Also, because there was an original flight, “1112″ that was heading back from India to JFK, they added another flight “11112″ to denote the flight that was delayed from India to JFK. That’s pretty sad.
In addition, I found this news story online about Air India delaying a flight for 45 hours from Los Angeles to Delhi. The pilots sucked so much that they couldn’t even land the plane correctly, so they blew a tire. The flight attendants had locked up the drinks so the passengers got angry. In addition, another Air India flight a week ago flew into Amritsar, and then left their passengers outside of the airport for 6 hours, because no one was inside to open the door. People eventually got sick and some threw up. Air India treats people like objects. They don’t even deserve to stay in business.
And that brings me back to an earlier question. Why are they still in business? The answer is because Air India provides the only direct flights to India from the US. One flight a day, and that’s all they provide. They enjoy this place in the industry, and happily abuse their customers without any concern. What Air India needs is a competitor — someone who can provide on-demand service to customers on normal flights and customers with special needs and priorities. That’ll teach them a lesson.

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Yoohoo! I am still alive!

Nov 12 '06

for_deepak's Full Review: Air India
I have traveled almost every airline, and was apprehensive about air India since beginning. Somehow, as fate has it, i missed my NW airlines and the earliest possible option available was Air India, so decided to take a chance. My misery started there:
1. Flight was 2 hrs late, and no body bothered to inform passenger saying flight is late
2. Finally, when we boarded flight, management and service was poor (except for one air hostess who was cooperating)
3. In the name of culture, they had a lady standing on the entrance to greet every passenger in Indian tradition, but she looked like she was doing it out of compulsion. No smile or gratitude on the face at all. I felt she was being ragged by her seniors
4. Food was ok, but nothing to boast about
5. A guy was smoking in the plane while in air. A crew member even noticed him, but thought the best thing is to ignore him
6. Here comes the bummer of all: Since my flight was delayed, I missed my domestic connection. Forget about Air India offering me compensation and accommodation for a day, they did not even acknowledge that its their problem. I was stranded in Bombay for a day, on my expense I got into a hotel, bought a new ticket and flew next day.

In total, a pathetic air lines, attitude and service. Avoid it as much as you can. Recommend this AIR INDIA to your worst enemy. You can even feel how bad it is even before you book flight, just go to www.airindia.com, this website sucks too just like their in plane service.

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Uncomfortable -- not worth the low price

Oct 04 '05

jbhangoo's Full Review: Air India
The cheapest flight from US to India but it is very long and you get very bad service before and during the flight. First, Air India said that you had to confirm your flight or risk losing your seat. I tried to call to confirm but the phone agents were very bad. They asked me what I wanted, and when I said that I wanted to confirm a flight, they just put me back on hold again. After 3 such calls, waiting on hold each time, I gave up and traveled to the Air India office. There, the agent just looked at my ticket and handed it back to me without even going to the computer, verbally confirming my flight. Why did he even bother? I wasted so much time pointlessly trying to confirm my flight. When you get to the airport, the flights always seem to be delayed and it is completely impossible to get any information from the agents. On board, the first thing I noticed was the very bad condition of the plane. Seats were dirty and some were taped together. A few of the television screens didn't work or displayed the negative of the actual color. One of the bathrooms had a non-functioning light. When I mentioned this to the steward, he angrily told me that the bathroom was out of service then wrote on the door in marker that it was closed. Even after the flight stopped in Frankfort, they still did not replace the bulb, preferring to keep the bathroom out of service. On a 20 hour flight, this is a severe discomfort. They served two meals on the first segment, breakfast and lunch. They managed this by apparently splitting the meal into two parts and serving one half each time. I say this because there were empty mini-trays on the tray that are usually filled with some food. They served drinks a few times, but they were warm. When I asked for ice, I was refused. The server seemed to have no experience because he spilled juice on me trying to fill my glass on the tray instead of picking it up. The movie schedule did not follow the one in the inflight magazine. The guy just put in whatever videotape he could find that wasn't broken. I know this because I sat beside the video machine. He showed a mix of Indian and American films. The American ones were very old while the Indian ones were just annoying. Don't waste your time on Air India. Pay a little more and take a real airline. The extra comfort is worth it.

The Bottom Line: cheap, but not worth the price

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