Air travel in India is on the rise; however, over the recent past, the number of players in the industry has shrunk, which is indubitably leading to an oligopolistic system.
This has invariably, as per multiple accounts, affected the quality of services offered by the existing airlines in India. In this, the Tata Group-owned Air India has become a bit of a usual suspect, with one or another instance of grotty service surfacing every few weeks.
In a similar development, a passenger took to social media platform Reddit to share their experience with the former national carrier. The user shared the instance and posted on the platform anonymously, and did so on a subreddit by the name IndiaSpeaks.
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Issue With The Passport
In this post, the user said, "Me and My 72-year-old mom checked in from Bhopal to Toronto via Delhi. The check-in staff gave her a boarding pass, and she boarded the flight at 8 am from Bhopal to Delhi."
The user then goes on to add the details of the events that transpired and said, "At Delhi, the transfer desk said, " There is some issue with her new passport, and she has to go 2nd floor on supervisor desk." Now she had wheelchair assistance from here on so the staff took her there."
"The lady at the D 2 ( second floor D row) said, " She is okay to board, she has boarding pass, seat assignment ", to which the wheel chair staff said " then why did you guys make me come the long way? "
"The lady at the supervisor desk said, " Folks at the transfer desk are known to be difficult; have a safe flight." I asked her specifically if everything was okay, and she said, "Don't worry."
I hate AirIndia…never again.
byu/Horseman_ inIndiaSpeaks
72-Year-Old Denied Boarding
The user further added on the situation that was soon turning abstruse. The user said, "She cleared immigration and waited for 5 hours before the boarding began. She was denied boarding!!!!"
The gate staff said, " Your old visa on your old passport is not linked to your new passport, and the Canadian embassy server is down, so we can't call anyone to link it. Also, considering the plane leaves in 30 min, we don't have time to try anything. "
"She has her old passport that has the visa. You can see it's a valid visa. You can see the stamps on her passport that she had traveled before."
"They said we understand what you are saying, but the computer said she can't board, so we can't let her."
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Dysfunctional System
The user further went on to add the ordeal of restarting the whole process and further added to the post, "I asked them to send a staff member guiding me to which they said some other person from some other gate will assist and this is end of our shift. The other person at the other gate helped us go through the process and dropped us at the reservation desk."
"The reservation desk said the Canadian immigration system is down, and we can't link, so let's wait until the server is up. Why don't you go and find the Air India ticket counter and ask them if there are seats available and whether you can be booked on a different flight?"
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'Will Have to Pay Full Price'
In an attempt to continue with the journey, the passenger consulted the authorities and what happened thereafter added to the woes, as he said, "I went to the ticketing counter and asked them, and they said that I would have to rebook and it's going to be a fresh ticket and that you owe us full price."
"I lost it. I screamed as much as I could and the ticker counter said that there is nothing they can do…I should talk to someone else, then I went and spoke to that other person who sent me back to the tick counter."
No Wheelchair Assistance
Keep in mind that I had to drag my mother and my bags with me because I don't have a new ticket and my old ticket is void, so no wheeler assistance was provided."
"After coming to the ticket counter and screaming session, they're asking me to wait. While we are waiting, we could not leave the airport because we don't have a ticket to come back. While we were going through all this, none of the airline staff offered us water, any compassion, or any polite words."
"We did everything right, followed instructions, followed rules; why does a passenger have to pay more for this? After a relentless argument, Air India decided to book us free of charge, and with luck, the Canada immigration website was online as well."
The user concluded the post by adding the following: "The ground staff at Delhi Airport for Air India is filled with non empathetic humans who treat passengers like animals. Never again, Air India!!"