Your dirty shack in the sky. Review on Air India

This review of is based on flights taken this summer (Aug 05)

LHR-DEL return

Arrived at Heathrow with my family and began to queue for flight AI-112, only to find out that the flight status had been changed to indefinitely delayed whilst still pondering what indefinitely delayed meant the status was changed to cancelled.

The advice given to me was to return tomorrow and ring a number for info. I was amazed no offer of accommodation it seemed that no effort was made to put passengers on other airlines. The reason given for the cancellation was the flooding at Mumbai airport. At this point I was very confused, Jet Airways operated a flight to Mumbai that day as did other airlines and in any case we were meant to be flying to Delhi and AI-112 originates in New York.

We came back the next day after spending an age trying to get thought to the Air India phone number (indecently we live over 100 miles away for the airport and it cost use ?80 each way) The signs didn’t look good a sign had been placed on the customer service desk say closed until further notice, what made it really galling was watching the staff walk in and out of the “closed” office. After a while we where told to return at 4.00pm to check in for AI-120. 4.00pm was 10 hours away so I had no choice but to book a day room at a hotel. We returned at 4.00pm only to be told the fight had been cancelled once again the only thing that stopped a number of Air India employees from ending up in hospital and me going to jail was the flight was checked in and we where shipped of to a hotel.

Its now Sunday and we should have been in Delhi 2 days ago, by word of mouth at breakfast we discovered we had to be at the airport by 9.30am to get a flight for 11.30am.

We rushed to the airport. The scheduled departure time of 11.30am came and went we didn’t get away until after 3.00pm.

Once in the Air the fight attendants were great but great flight attendants cant not make up for a smelly aircraft the smell actually worked its way right up the air bridge when boarding. The seats where tatty the in-flight entertainment was pathetic barely functional head sets distorted picture on the view screen (no in seat ptvs). By the time I need the toilet, they were a total unhygienic mess. The interior in general was wretched more akin to a beggar’s abode rather than the palace in the sky that Air India describes its aircraft as. The food service was good but not much more than good.

In contrast to the outward trip the return trip was almost incident free, check in was fine boarded and departed on time. But as usual the aircraft was a disgrace dirty smelly worn fabric on the seats. The ptvs scratched and blurred plus the video tape had been played so many times it was worn out interference all over the screen. The food was nice once again. The real bizarre thing was as a family traveling together sharing the same PNR its customary to gets seats together. We indeed did get seats together no next to each other but behind each other (43b,44,b,45b & 46b) with the help of a flight attendant we did manage to get seated relatively close to each other.

Unfortunately I was unaware of my passenger rights under European Law, which I may add are very extensive. What disappoints most is Air India didn’t make passengers aware of what there statuary rights were and the lack of information given to the passengers. I am in the process of trying to claim compensation from Air India with the help of my local trading standards dept. Air India has refused point blank to compensate but I did expect that, however I shall continue to press them.

After getting the letter from Air India saying that because of flooding at Mumbai they didnt have to offer compensation I did a bit of investigating and ended up reciving an email form the forecasting project manager from the group stats dept of the British Airports Authroity who attached an spreadsheet listing dozens of flights that came and went to Mumbai from heathrow over a two day period. I made Air India aware of this information and asked for specific reasons why my flight had been cancelled due to weather and why this very same weather hadnt stopped the dozens of flights including Air India flights, a perfeclty reasonable question to ask in the circumsatnces all I got was a reply which was rude bordering on the offensive telling me in no uncertain terms where to go. draw your own conclusions Air India are even refusing to send me a letter confirming the delays/cancellations to enable me to claim from my travel insurance ive sent two requests and none have been answered my insurance company where bewildered by Air India's response. The Air Transport Users Council have now taken up this matter and will ask Air India about the flight delay the ATUC is an off shoot of the Civil Avaiation Authortiy and has bite wondering what sort of response they will get from Air Inida.