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Orginally posted by Gapodi

Now also to let everyone know this compensation is governed by rules but in general European airlines offer 600 Euros for flights over 3500 kms in length. This is thanks to a stringent court ruling that was passed by EU a shrt while ago.
Full details can be found at
http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/l24173.htm

In US DOT is responsible for oversseing the rules
But in Canada................. there is no such rule yet as per following link dated 2003
http://www.cta-otc.gc.ca/cta-otc2000/report-rapport/2004/recommend_e.html


Happy Flying Folks!!!!

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Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

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Orginally posted by dfwrp
Air India always has some backlog it seems.. and if they put you in the next day's flight.. they will have some stranded passengers again who will not get a seat because somebody couldn't find a seat yesterday and needs to go today.. and it will keep going on and on.. specially during the peak season..

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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"

While I have been fortunate not to experience anything bad when flying Air India (which I have not done much though), this was the worst thing I have ever heard or read about it.

However, one thing I still cannot understand - and may be I am dumb - how come there was not a single person checked in according to Gapodi? If there were so many passangers denied check in, it seems the original flight never took off. Is that the case, or some (say 30-40 passangers) were denied check in? If it was only 30-40 or something like that, when did the rest 300 passangers check in? Could they have checked in before the counter opened? If yes, how was that possible? If no, it clearly means that the counter opens much before Gapodi went there and therefore was late in check in....and that is not surprising, since not only Air India, I find that most of the flights going to India, the passangers are there 5-6 hrs before the flight time and so actually about 2 1/2 hrs before the flight, almost all the passangers have actually checked in. This is not only in India, but even in Singapore I have seen this phenomenon and with ANY airline going to India.

Chandresh

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Chandresh

Advice is free – lessons I charge for!!

It looks the EU rules dont apply to airlines not based in EU. And we dont seem to have any such rule in place in Canada.
I am quite sure that the plane never took off that day as no one seemed ot get the direct flight seat. The Air India folks of course denied and said this was simply a overbooking issue which is routine.....yeah right stranding every body like this everyday!! It seemed something went disastrously wrong that day like the plane developed a snag and was declared unfit to travel. Could also be that an exceptionally large number of passengers from previous day were offloaded as well and were given seats on the direct flight as believe it or not, there was a special counter just for passengers that were bumped off previous day!! Now thats height of customer care.
But no one that I talked to out of at least 2 -3 dozen people seemed to have got the direct flight. As luck would have it, AI recently launched a new mid day flight from Bombay to London and they managed to book most of passengers for that flight by sending them to Bombay first. Most passengers were travelling to London anyways.
There were several passengers in Hotel that day that were destined to travel by AI to NY, Calgary and other destinations in North America. Plus many passengers took compensation but decided to stay with their relatives or even chose ot take taxi fare from AI and went back to arrive next morning. There were plenty of familiar faces in the queue next day and of course there was a special counter for bumped off Royal Maharajas of yesterday's flight.
I was also told by one agent that they opened the counter much earlier but according to their own rules it should be opened about 3 hours before flight time. Otherwise may be next time someone can check in a week in advance if counter was open ;-)
The worst thing is not that we were not able to fly that day. As they say sh*t happens. But what is utterly regrettable is the total confusion and lack of any civilised behaviour on part of AI agents. It was ineffciency at its peak. No one seemed to know what to do. As I mentioned earlier another friend of mine had similar problem with KLM but look at the difference they way KLM handled the situation. To see fellow travellers become hysterical, women travelling with kids having such hard time, foreigners weeping and wailing ....... I truly hope no one ever gets to see such non sense in their life time.

I think you need to change your login name, Mr. Gapodi - maybe that's the reason people are not believing you

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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"

people may think you are true to your name.

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Driller the thriller

This is truly gross. And yet, Air India knows that all its flights will go ful because this is one of the busiest routes in the world.

I guess this is what happens when the govt. of India runs an airline. Look at the local flight scene. I've flown Jet Airways everytime I 've been to India lately and the service has been nothing short of fantastic every single time. Granted, the process is not as involved as boarding an international flight, but I used to fly Indian Airlines prior to Jet and the difference in service is earth and sky. I haven't seen the level of effieciency and management that Jet offers anywhere even in the U.S. And they're doing all this right in India with Indian passengers, baggage handlers and security personnel. So I don't buy the argument that you just CAN'T manage this is India. The question is whether you WANT to.

Btw, I had an equally horrible experience with Air France a few years back. And no compensation. Took me a while to get over it but eventually I did.

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