Fogged out at Delhi Airport
There was fog in the air. Though I left bleary eyed from home, albeit with a song in my heart, at 5 AM this morning, fate had other plans for the day. Together with hundreds of other hapless passengers, I remained cooped up in the security lounge, waiting for boarding the aircraft, flight delayed due to the annual scourge of Delhi airports- fog in the air. All the high-fangled CAT systems they speak about seem to have met the waterloo of ill trained pilots; a sad fact of life ensured by runaway competition in the sky, and airlines tightening up at their purses, all of this combined with a virtual drought of quality pilots.
Things only got worse after we were herded(in retrospect, that is the right word) into the aircraft. We sat in the aircraft for TWO WHOLE HOURS, while the congestion created due to fog started getting cleared by the Delhi ATC. In effect, we were on the ground for six hours before getting airborne. To top it all, we are now going to Chennai, to return to our ultimate destination, Hyderabad, after the stopover in Chennai. The roundabout circuit is ostensibly ‘due to the rush of fog at Hyderabad’ combined with ‘Crew shift timings’, as an air hostess said. I tend to believe the real reason is the latter – cantankerous crew wanting to stick to their eight hour shift, the passengers be shafted.
But then I started seeing the better side of it all.
To start with, let me mention the grit shown by the air hostesses. As the plane kept getting more and more delayed, the passengers started getting a mite restless. The cabin started resembling that of a DTC bus, left stranded on the Ring Road due to a flat tyre. As it is,low cost airlines do attract exactly the type of passengers who would be otherwise be traveling by train and then taking the ubiquitous DTC home ( pardon me acting so uppity and snobbish, but that is how some of the folks behaved.)
The gentleman in front of me started it all. Once he got to know that we were to go to Chennai, and not Hyderabad, he kept calling the air hostess back for clarifications. The girl kept her calm and kept giving him the same answers, in different tones, trying to get it into his skull that the situation was quite beyond her control. Our fellow then began ringing up the call centre of Indigo, and we all know how poorly informed the call centre guys are. I now firmly believe that these call centre chaps are not placed there for providing assistance, but actually to act as an almighty buffer between those who beseech information from the ruddy telephone, and those who really can provide information, aka the suited guys sizing you up from behind the one way glasses, as you struggle past the bimbo at the check-in counter, who doesn’t know pounds from kilograms, and would mostly be happier burrowing into the sand and hiding from the god-awful queue lining up to take the cheap flight into the skies, but for the friendly bumpkin who guides her through the motions, and is otherwise responsible to handle the baggage.
Point is, the conversation with the air hostess went absolutely nowhere. Our friend got angrier and angrier, while the air hostess remained calm. During all this hullabaloo, another gentleman became restless and decided that as the aircraft was still on the ground, he might as well go out for a breath of fresh air. That was stoutly opposed by an air hostess, and this gentleman returned meekly to his seat, frothing the words ‘b***h’ under his breath for the benefit of those seated close to him- ‘look how brave I am. I can call the ‘b***h’ what she really is’. But after he sat down his ego unfortunately kicked in. Imagine being given a shut up call by a mere girl. I am sure that in some corner of the fellow’s brain, his quasy modern façade was pierced, and his country bumpkin reality felt offended being ticked off by a city slicker in knickers.
So the fellow went back and began a diatribe of how he was an offended customer. And the great Indian Circus began straightaway. People of all walks of life, of all shapes, sizes and seat numbers started getting up and ‘gheraoing’ the thre air hostesses. It was going to turn out to a regular riot, and I started expecting someone to whip out a burning rag to torch the aircraft, amidst chants of ‘hai hai’.
Thankfully, none of that happened, and the pilot, who got a wind of the fracas developing, thanks to a frantic call on the intercom by a harried air hostess, came on line, albeit belatedly, and attempted to soothe nerves with some ‘latest information’, which was actually more of the same.
We finally took off some seven hours after we had checked in. After the detour to Chennai, we finally made it to Hyderabad at three in the afternoon, a full ten hour sojourn.
Things only got worse after we were herded(in retrospect, that is the right word) into the aircraft. We sat in the aircraft for TWO WHOLE HOURS, while the congestion created due to fog started getting cleared by the Delhi ATC. In effect, we were on the ground for six hours before getting airborne. To top it all, we are now going to Chennai, to return to our ultimate destination, Hyderabad, after the stopover in Chennai. The roundabout circuit is ostensibly ‘due to the rush of fog at Hyderabad’ combined with ‘Crew shift timings’, as an air hostess said. I tend to believe the real reason is the latter – cantankerous crew wanting to stick to their eight hour shift, the passengers be shafted.
But then I started seeing the better side of it all.
To start with, let me mention the grit shown by the air hostesses. As the plane kept getting more and more delayed, the passengers started getting a mite restless. The cabin started resembling that of a DTC bus, left stranded on the Ring Road due to a flat tyre. As it is,low cost airlines do attract exactly the type of passengers who would be otherwise be traveling by train and then taking the ubiquitous DTC home ( pardon me acting so uppity and snobbish, but that is how some of the folks behaved.)
The gentleman in front of me started it all. Once he got to know that we were to go to Chennai, and not Hyderabad, he kept calling the air hostess back for clarifications. The girl kept her calm and kept giving him the same answers, in different tones, trying to get it into his skull that the situation was quite beyond her control. Our fellow then began ringing up the call centre of Indigo, and we all know how poorly informed the call centre guys are. I now firmly believe that these call centre chaps are not placed there for providing assistance, but actually to act as an almighty buffer between those who beseech information from the ruddy telephone, and those who really can provide information, aka the suited guys sizing you up from behind the one way glasses, as you struggle past the bimbo at the check-in counter, who doesn’t know pounds from kilograms, and would mostly be happier burrowing into the sand and hiding from the god-awful queue lining up to take the cheap flight into the skies, but for the friendly bumpkin who guides her through the motions, and is otherwise responsible to handle the baggage.
Point is, the conversation with the air hostess went absolutely nowhere. Our friend got angrier and angrier, while the air hostess remained calm. During all this hullabaloo, another gentleman became restless and decided that as the aircraft was still on the ground, he might as well go out for a breath of fresh air. That was stoutly opposed by an air hostess, and this gentleman returned meekly to his seat, frothing the words ‘b***h’ under his breath for the benefit of those seated close to him- ‘look how brave I am. I can call the ‘b***h’ what she really is’. But after he sat down his ego unfortunately kicked in. Imagine being given a shut up call by a mere girl. I am sure that in some corner of the fellow’s brain, his quasy modern façade was pierced, and his country bumpkin reality felt offended being ticked off by a city slicker in knickers.
So the fellow went back and began a diatribe of how he was an offended customer. And the great Indian Circus began straightaway. People of all walks of life, of all shapes, sizes and seat numbers started getting up and ‘gheraoing’ the thre air hostesses. It was going to turn out to a regular riot, and I started expecting someone to whip out a burning rag to torch the aircraft, amidst chants of ‘hai hai’.
Thankfully, none of that happened, and the pilot, who got a wind of the fracas developing, thanks to a frantic call on the intercom by a harried air hostess, came on line, albeit belatedly, and attempted to soothe nerves with some ‘latest information’, which was actually more of the same.
We finally took off some seven hours after we had checked in. After the detour to Chennai, we finally made it to Hyderabad at three in the afternoon, a full ten hour sojourn.
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