kishorebhargava

Travel always means excitement. Sometimes positively, and sometimes chaotic. Recently on a trip to Bangalore, I had a flying first. I was at the airport well on time, checked-in, past security and ready to board. While waiting in the lounge, I headed towards one of the display boards to check the flight status. I noticed that my flight was delayed by 35 minutes. I then went out in search of the ground crew to get a confirmation. The staff I spoke to, confirmed the delay. So I settled down to catch up on some work. The usual, check mail, check all servers are operational and being looked after. A quick check on twitter, and then settled down to read.

My ears were paying close attention towards the public address system for flight announcement. However, the wait seemed endless. The display board continued to show a status of “delayed” and the ETD as 1735 despite the fact that it was now 1740. Anxious to board and leave, I once again searched for the ground crew. To my horror, I was mockingly informed that the flight had just taken off!

Surprisingly, before I could even begin to register what had just happened. The crew took my boarding pass, scampered off to the check-in counter and promptly returned with a fresh boarding pass for the next flight.

I now had an additional 45 minutes before the next flight. I curiously inquired as to how it was possible for a flight to depart with a passenger missing, and yet no announcement or page from the airlines. The lame excuse I got was *we are aware that announcements cannot be heard in the lounge”. This is really weird, I had twittered a while ago that I heard a paging announcement for Shiv Khera and was wondering if it was the famous management guru being paged. The area I was sitting in I could very clearly hear all the announcements, and I surely never heard my name being paged or an announcement for my flight. The second statement was, there were 145 passengers for the flight and 144 boarded. I really find that hard to believe. In fact, I have a feeling I saw several passengers who were at the check-in counter with me.

Anyway, I decided as long as they put me on the next flight, I should just move on. In order to not miss my next flight I decided I may as well make my way down to the gates and wait there. The new airport is great, but when it comes to managing seating areas, there still seems to be a shortage. Despite the fact that the travel boom is sort of on the slow-down, there is just very little place to sit at the airport. And absolutely none at the GATES.

I waited patiently at Gate 13, and even when it came to the flight being board, a) there was no announcement and b) the display board kept showing the GMR logo rather than the flight details. In fact, after approximately 15 minutes the display finally showed the flight details and several people left the queue after realising that they were not headed to Bangalore but to another city all together.

I just can’t understand how between the airport authorities and the airlines they can have such a lax approach. IMHO, the fact that I missed my first flight, I feel that was a serious security lapse. If I had checked-in baggage it would have been totally chaotic.

Finally, I am not sure what to say about the airlines, they handled the situation smoothly. Deprived me of ranting, raving and a good fight, by putting me on the next flight. But at the same time, excessively lazy ground crew, which mocks passengers and was rather inattentive. JetLite and DIAL, get your act together please!

In contrast, the return was so much smoother. As I twittered – Blissfully uneventful, brutally efficient and fanatically on-time! BIAL and INDIGO, thanks for a pleasant return journey.

Cheers…Kishore
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