Feb 15, 2007 07:19 PM
2546 Views
Since there have been many rave reviews before me with respect to Air Deccan, I would try to be short and to-the-point. I have flown Air Deccan twice and taken a vow never to do it again. I am a frequent flyer with all other airlines.
*Pros:
*1. They fly, so if you have a real emergency then you could try them.
Cons:(In no particular order)
They have the most badly designed web-site.
Their backend IT - infrastructure is completely screwed-up. How do I know this? Well it’s a long story, but take my word for it.
The ticketing staff at their airport-counters are NOT Air-Deccan employees. Instead they are some local subcontracted travel-services company's employees, and therefore they do not have a real stake in providing a better service.
The check-in counter staff is rude, inconsiderate, does not knows how to smile(because of the stress of not being able to land a job in a good airline).
Their check-in process does not allocate a seat-number! This is the killer. How difficult it could be? What is the reasoning/logic behind this free-seating? Enlighten me people, please.
They sometimes prepone(antonym of postpone) their flight schedule.
Explanation - If you buy a ticket for 9 pm on a particular day, it could get reschedule to 2 pm on the same day. They do this by sending you an SMS at 1:30 am in the night!
It happened to me once when I had booked myself from Pune to Hyderabad. I called up their Customer Service to confirm this also. In the end, I had to go to the airport, haggle with the ticketing staff for a full-refund, called their Technical Support to fix their online-system so that the ticketing-staff could actually pay me the refund, because otherwise they claimed that I would only get half-refund, even though I was there at the airport at 4 am and the rescheduled flight was supposed to fly at 2 pm.
When I actually got the Rs 8300 refund for a Pune to Hyderabad flight that I had booked two days ago, I went to the Indian-Airlines counter and enquired about a flight in the evening from Pune to Hyderabad. I got the ticket for Rs 2700! Translation - Air Deccan could be cheating you. No frills - Bull SH*T.
A Side effect of free-seating is that if you are traveling with old slow-walking parents, kids or a disabled person, then once you board the plane all of you have to find a place to sit somewhere. Since all the window and aisle seats have already been taken, your six-person family could be sitting in middle seats on six rows spread all across the plane. That is going to be a really memorable experience since all of them will be able to spend some time with strangers and increase harmony among us.
They don’t serve any food, beverage, water etc free. So a plane-load of passengers pays 10 rupees each for a bottle of water. So, total selling price of all the water is roughly Rs 1000. Now if you are interested in the economics if this, imagine how much it costs Air Deccan to actually manage the selling through flight-stewards and process the proceeds into the system. Are they even making Rs 500 per flight by selling water? If not, how intelligent is Gopinathan? What he actually does not realize is the opportunity cost of not even serving water to the passengers.
When you actually decide to buy some food, you better have the exact change in rupees, or else the flight-stewards will snatch the food-packet back right from your hands! No change - no food - sorry sir.
They have the most unprofessional & unkempt staff at their boarding gates. Most interstate bus terminals have better staff to guide the passengers. Of course, Rajdhani and Shatabdi train-staff is also much better compared to them. They have poor communication skills. I do not expect the KingFisher glamour, but want that if there is a flight delay(for whatever reason) then someone should be capable of understanding and addressing any issues.
Their announcements on the Public Address system are the worst of all the Airlines. Here is where you can easily compare apples to apples. An announcement is an announcement, but you will find a repeating pattern of bad quality(voice, delivery and content) in Air Deccan announcements.
The choice of color for their logos etc is a combination of strange-yellow and even stranger light-blue. Granted that they call themselves Air "Deccan", so by definition they are proclaiming to being a regional airline concentrated at the southern part of the India, and therefore it matches with the region's penchant for this color combination, but Damn. Can we please have something that is region-neutral?
Irrespective of the time-of-day or night you go to any airport in India, and watch the Air Deccan ticketing counter, you fill find at least 6 or more people fighting with the staff inside the booth. So if you are faint at heart and cannot fight for your rights, money, time, etc then stay away from these counters.
Isn't this enough? If you want more even after reading all the above then please leave a request in the comment and I promise to grow this list to 20.
