Yesterday, we are scheduled to receive my brother-in-law and his wife arriving from NJ, USA at about 02.45am in Hyderabad airport. Woke up at 02.00am and called the Air India numbers. No response. Tried their website. Their arrival information page doesn’t work at all, at least with Mozilla family of browsers. So I headed for airport anyway. Upon reaching the airport, the TV information system showed that the estimated time of arrival is 03.45am. So stayed back there with entire family members, including kids, my inlaws, and my brother-in-law’s inlaws.
The wait was not that easy, given that the airport lounge is closed due to increased security threats in the recent days. Had to stay out standing at the gate. We waited and waited, as the airline TV system didn’t show any further information, except for the rerun commercials. The whiteboard that is supposed to contain the flight info showd data that is two days old, dating back to 11th Aug. Nobody from Air India even cared to erase it.
Hours passed by, and till 6.00am, nothing happended. The security person at the gate kept on saying that the flight didn’t arrive and he doesn’t have any further info. Only at about 6.10am, the TV system is updated with info that the flight is due for arrival by 07.00am. Since the kids are there for quite sometime, and it is almost time for maid servant to comeover for daily cleaning, some of us had to head back home. Latha had to stay back home for getting things done at home. Rest of us went back to airport by 07.30. Only at about 07.15am, I could get a operator of Air India respond on their phone, with info that the flight arrives at 07.30. That too after waiting on the line for about 10 minutes.
Finally, the TV system stayed put with the arrival info of 07.20am for flight AI 0600. By the time these people got out of customs area, it is almost 08.40am. The long wait outside the airport ended only after 6 hours. Spurthi and Surya are very much tired from the wait.
However, our side of the pain is much better. Passengers in this flight had to go thru much bigger pains in Mumbai airport. All of them are given pretty much zero information about the flight’s planned schedule. They are made to wait long hours for the very limited security check infrastructure (only two gates for eight long lines of people.) There is mere chaos in terms of when the plane would start. There is no way to call home from the Mumbai airport. So they waited there, simply uninformed, waiting for something to happen.
There is obviously a greater need to emphasize more on security at this time, but that doesn’t mean that airlines can simply put people in absolute chaos. They can improve their information systems to be more accurate and current. In that respect, Air India seems to be doing no good at all. For an airline that has a bad reputation for quite some time, this current situation is not helping at all.