My Horrible Experience with Air India staff in Hyderabad and Mumbai.
Dear Sirs,
I am a frequent flyer by Air India for past 37 years, holding a Maharaja Club membership card No. 100158512, I am very Loyal to Air India although lot of suggestion from family and friend to stop flying Air India. Now with my experience of yesterday’s delay and service provided at the Maharaja Club Lounge in Mumbai airport forced me to write this complaint to the higher authorities in Air India and the ministry of Aviation.
I and my wife checked in at Hyderabad airport for flight no. AI-965 flying direct non-stop to Jeddah at 6:30pm in Business Class, flight was schedule 20:40 departure, at 20:15 it was announce the flight is delayed till 23:30 that means the flight will reach Jeddah at 04:30 approximately which will be very inconvenient for people who will be receiving us at Jeddah airport, however delays happens in airline industry. At 23:30 it was announced again the flight delayed further till 01:05hrs, there was no choice but to wait. At 02:00hrs one of the Air India staff came and informed that there is problem in the aircraft therefore a special plane is coming to take us to Mumbai and there is an aircraft waiting for us to fly Jeddah. We took off from Hyderabad at 03:00hrs and reached Mumbai at 04:30hrs. At the transfer desk in Mumbai we were informed that the flight is at 12:30 in the afternoon and Hyderabad staff gave us wrong information about the departure time. We were offered the invitation to Maharaja Lounge to relax and have food and beverages.
Within 10 minutes of our entry to the lounge hundreds of economy passengers raided the Lounge and occupied the whole seating area, and to our surprise the food and beverages which was on the buffet table was removed and kept in lock and they refuse to offer even drinking water saying they have instructions from Air India management NO SERVICE accept passengers stay in the lounge till the flight departure, they even locked the toilets except one in each ladies and men section for all these hundreds of passengers.
I tried to contact Air India staff but no one was there with authority to help the genuine Business class passengers. We were left in miserable condition unattended (see photographs attached) for more than 11 hours. (Flight departed at 2:30pm) I tried to move in other Lounge available at the airport, but unfortunately they refused to accept us even by payment.
In this world of competition where is our national airlines is heading. With decades of experience and lot of Government subsidy support our airline is downgrading their services leaving the passengers unhappy and unsatisfied. The new and young airlines are coming up fast with lots of courtesy and prompt service.
I went to Hyderabad on 4 days short leave and was supposed to be back on Wednesday 19th June and this delay has caused me additional 3 days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) due to weekend and I will join on Saturday.
I would like to know how Air India going to compensate me for this trauma of stress and financial loss.
Yours unhappy and stressed customer
Fazil M. Zakaria