Disgrace to the name. Review on Air India

Indian Airlines is a disgrace to the country's name. First of all, the government has no business running an airline. But we have a Nehruvian socialistic legacy to eradicate, and not just on this one front.

After one terrible experience with IA back in 1997, I vowed never to fly them if possible. On that trip, they had 12 hour delays for their flights out of Delhi. Not one person was at the counters.

When personnel finally appeared, they would point to the next counter, and so on until you reached the duty manager, who would send you back to the first counter.

The food is lousy: bread rolls will be so stale that a street dog wouldn't touch them. They serve discounted cold drinks, often with the tag ''Buy 2, get 1 free'' still on them. Actually, ''serve'' is not the word - the IA staff never ''serve,'' they throw food at you.

Recently, I had to fly IA out of Bangalore as they have a deal with their partner airline Cathay Pacific (more on that ridiculous airline in a separate review). The flight was supposedly 1 hour late leaving Bangalore. Of course, they checked us in as soon as we arrived and let us into the waiting area.

Every half hour they would announce another half hour delay. Finally, 2-3 hours later, they let us board the aircraft. As soon as one entered the aircraft, it was clear that there was no way that plane was going to fly. The cockpit was shutdown and empty, there was no food in the galley or water in the toilets. It was just a pretext to get us in the plane. Apparently there's a rule that says that if passengers have been checked in and have not boarded for some time, the airline has to provide food. This way, they can avoid the cost of that rule. After making us wait in this tin can of a plane - no AC, just Bangalore mosquitoes for atmosphere as the doors were open - they finally announced a ''technical difficulty'' and made us deplane. What was the technical difficulty? No pilot or crew - they had to be flown in from Calcutta!

The plane barely made it to Singapore for the connecting flight. Once more, lousy food, reluctant to serve, warm beer, and a distasteful encounter with the worst of PSU employees - overpaid, unionized and arrogant.

Typically IA aircraft are poorly maintained, the toilets barely work. This is the only airline I've travelled on which needs Odonil in the toilets. A commentator here makes the claim that only the poor IA and other government - sorry, taxpayer - supported companies are treated in a shabby fashion by their customers. The reality is that IA's staff treat their aircraft as they probably act at home, in a disgusting manner. If they had pride in their work, they wouldn't have allowed their aircraft to decay to the extent that they have. (There's a phenomenon called the ''broken window'' syndrome - the theory is that if you allow a single broken window in a home or apartment, it encourages vandals to break the rest.)

Of course, a written complaint to IA PR went unanswered.

Never again.