Air India flight 137 Delhi to Frankfurt....the flight from Heck (Air India)

Member Name: kgulbran

Product:	Air India
Date:	23/11/05 (2214 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Delay, discomfort, safety concerns

I and a friend were to end our trip to India with AI137 from Delhi to Frankfurt on 9/24/05. Of course there were also hundreds more passengers, Indians, Germans, Italians, Swiss and Belgian. The flight was supposed to take off at 7:30am. After sitting in the jet a while the pilot let on that there was a problem with the brakes and he would not fly it. He announced that the plane we could see to our right would be used instead and we would continue to that one without needing to go through security again. This never happened and it was announced that another jet was being flown in for us. This never happened. No Air India employees could provide real information on when we would really be able to take off.

I am not complaining about the pilot not wanting to fly a plane with bad breaks. I am complaining about an "International" airline which can't fix or replace a plane in 2 days, about an "International" airline which takes 2 days to even begin getting us on other flights out of the country, about an "International" airline which carted us around for close to 48 hours without sleep. (the two times we were taken to the dirty Centaur hotel we were not allowed to sleep overnight there. 1st time we were taken to the Centaur in the afternoon and carted back to spend the night at the airport at 11pm, 2nd time arrived in the afternoon and carted back to the airport at around 9pm.

After sitting around 5-6 hours on the jet we were herded off to various gates a while for the brakes to be worked on. At this point a friend requested a blanket for me because I had a high fever and chills in the cold airport and was simply told NO!

At 1pm we were again herded into a filthy bus (at least the one I was in) and to the Centaur Hotel. My room had a wet mould stain growing in one corner. At 11PM more busloads of people arrived and we were carted back to the airport - according to AI because we had a flight at 1AM.

We boarded a plane many hours after 1AM and this also didn't take off. The pilot still refused to fly it. (Apparently no other jets are available in Air India’s entire "FLEET")

After being shuttled around more gates we were told to collect our baggage and we would be carted back to the Centaur again. The moving of baggage made it easy for at least one of our passenger's luggage to be picked off by thieves.

One of the Indian nationals got a hold of a reporter from NDTV who met us out front of the airport and we did a TV interview in hopes of making Air India ashamed enough of their behavior to provide another plane.

After the interviews ran Air India became much friendlier and sent out 3 reps to Centaur to get us on Lufthansa flights. (43 hours later?) Even this was pathetic because their presence was not announced to the passengers, we met them by accident. We were told that we would be put on a Lufthansa flight only if we were in danger of losing our jobs or if we had definite health concerns. (Rather an unreasonable demand considering what we had been through already.) To make matters worse we heard another rumour hours later of there being AI employees in a room at the Centaur and decided to check it out. We discovered to our horror that the first employees in the lobby had NOT put us on a flight and we had to go through the entire process again.

I hope that India Tourism realizes that now there are HUNDREDS of tourists whose stories of abuse and mistreatment are going to spread and prevent others from going or returning to India. Unless Air India can redevelop at least the most BASIC of "Customer Service" structures and learn to respond to problems and attend to them (in less than two days).

If this had happened due to a natural disaster or a military incident I could have some understanding. This happened due to sloppiness, stupidity, lack or organization, training and customer service skills.

It is impossible to sleep while something like this is going on so the effect on physical and mental health is enormous. Both of us lost a day of work each and were exhausted for the first day of work we were able to go to. Total delay was almost 48 hours and I am sure that no one would have done anything if we hadn't gotten on television.

Summary: Avoid Air India. If you do fly them make sure you can afford the extra time it may take.