Incredible Air India: Masters of the waiting game

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

NEW DELHI – And so I have plonked myself near one of the (Air India) boarding gates in the hope that it will turn out to be the one for my flight.

Outside the gate, pandemonium breaks out. An irate man is shouting at the staff manning the gate. His hands waving in the air, he yells at the top of his voice.

Although I do not yet speak Hindi, Tamil or any of the 200 or so languages or dialects that are spoken in this country, I think what he’s expressing is pretty universal – anger at the lack of information about what is happening to his flight.

A crowd gathers around the melee. Everybody loves a scene. I wonder if they are filming a Bollywood movie because the day before, I had spotted a famous Indian actor at the Shangri-La Hotel – he had dark glasses on and was surrounded by the paparazzi.

A voice, muffled as they always are on airport PA systems, makes an announcement about my flight. The new flight time is 7pm, 11 hours away. Apparently, the aircraft has been deemed unworthy and is stranded in Dubai and they have to fly in a new aircraft from Mumbai.

More pandemonium breaks out. Lots of curses and swearing, and flailing of hands. Exhausted, I head back to the Air India lounge. There are really only two ways to react to a situation like this – you either scream and insist something be done about it – or you accept it.

Since there really was nothing that could be done about it – a Jet Airways flight to Singapore had just departed and there were no flights out to Singapore until 9pm – you could say, we were caught between a defective plane and no place to go.

Free breakfast is arranged at the airport restaurant, after which we were told we would be bussed to the Grand Delhi where we could rest until 5pm when we would be bussed back to the airport.

Imagine a full planeload of passengers being herded out through immigration and customs – to leave the airport, we had to depart the country – and then packed into four buses. It took nearly an hour for the whole thing to be completed.

I offered an old man, clearly weak on his legs, a seat on my baggage trolley. He is visiting his son in Singapore. His son was a journalist with The Times of India but is now a management consultant with a multinational “and doing very well”. He wants to visit Malaysia and asks me for places to stay in Kuala Lumpur and Genting Highlands. “Cheap place, I am an old man, I cannot afford expensive hotels.”

He reminds me of another man I met at the Shangri-La cocktail party. He too has a son in Singapore. “He’s not doing anything now because he’s made so much money from real estate,” he told me proudly over a glass of Cloudy Bay.

This man though looked like he could not only afford a room at the Shangri-La; he could probably buy the whole hotel.

A staff from the Grand Delhi is there, supervising the transfer. He is bombarded with questions, one of which was, “How sure are you that the flight will depart at 7pm?”

Shaking his head, he said, “I can say 80% guaranteed because, at this moment, we have not been asked to serve you dinner.”

On that reassuring thought, I pile into the bus. A few of us have to stand because the bus is full. Swaying and trying to keep our balance as the bus lurched back to the city, my travelling companion turns to me and winks, “A slightly different experience from this morning eh?”

Yes, from the heights of uber-luxury we had plummeted to the depths of the real world of cattle class travel.

At the hotel, which I remember as the old Grand Hyatt, I treat myself to a champagne brunch. It’s the only way to cope with situations such as these. My friend heads to a spa.

At 3.45pm, we get a wake-up call. “Please meet in lobby in 15 minutes.” Mass check-out and then mass exodus back to the airport.

I must say I was amazed at the obedience and congeniality of my fellow passengers. Perhaps there is a switch we all flick on in situations such as these where you say to yourself, I am just going to go with the flow and make the best out of a bad situation.

Or perhaps it’s because it’s Air India and everybody accepts it is part of the experience you get with the airline.

On the bus, it’s like we have all become old friends, bonded through crisis. We exchange life stories, swap name cards and promise to keep in touch.

We go through immigration and customs again and as my passport gets stamped again, I wonder if I have been counted as yet another arrival into India – and given the number of delays (Air India’s inflight magazine says winter is the season of delays due to fog), I wonder how much double-counting goes on…

As we walk towards our gate to board our flight, there is a little jig in all our steps. But wait. Ah, we need to go back towards Gate 1 which is right on the other side of the terminal, down to the tarmac, to identify our baggage.

To cut a long story short – seriously, this is as short as I could make it – the flight took off at 6.30pm, half an hour earlier than re-scheduled but 12 hours later than originally intended.
The champagne before take-off has never tasted sweeter.

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe

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