I am appalled at fight delay situations in Indian metropolitan cities without any seeming resolution.
Look at the YouTube videos of stranded passengers gradually turning hostile and physically threatening ground staff. The main culprits seem to be Air India, Spice Jet and Jet Airways. There are major fault-lines on both sides of the divide. It starts off with check-in or boarding or even while sitting in sweltering aircraft on the tarmac. Announcements are made for delays of an hour which lengthens into as much as 15 hours to even the next day. Though mostly attributed to Technical Failure, other reasons like staffing or VIP boarding are put forward. While one can acknowledge that safety must always remain a priority for the carrier, many of the reasons ring hollow to frustrated passengers. Carriers usually leave one or two powerless staff to face the wrath of two to three hundred passengers who are tired, exhausted, hungry, thirsty and often with small yelling and crying children. The airlines are mostly oblivious to all the suffering and make no attempt to even provide water bottles, let alone food vouchers or overnight hotel stays (a thing of the past it seems). The angry passengers on the other hand, are something else. They pounce upon the counter staff, yelling and screaming all at once, pushing, shoving and even manhandling the poor employees who can do little about the situation except calling their superiors who either promise and don’t deliver, or just don’t answer their ringing phones. Passengers let fly threats and insults to their cowering targets. In any other half civilized airports, the employees would have just left their stations, citing their right to safety and a proper employment environment. CISF armed constabulary are sometimes drawn to the scene but they don’t interfere or quell the unrest. The problem can easily be solved in the manner of other well-run airports. There are passenger ‘bill of rights’ that tells them what compensation they can get for all eventualities: getting bumped off due to overbooking, late flights with time delay specifications, cancellation of scheduled flights, sitting next to passengers who infringe on your seat space, those with body odour and several other inconveniences to the travellers. Roland Francis Toronto.
