Travails of traveling in a no-frills airline!

Some days you just have it plainly unlucky. Much as I can not bring it upon myself yet to travel alone in a train with our six month old and the time involved therein, in all our combined wisdom (read cleverness) I booked a  return ticket from Lucknow to Delhi for August nearly a month in advance. Not just that one even secretly congratulated oneself on saving a few hundred bucks due to early bird discount on the top travel website. 

For the uninitiated, traveling in India by air can leave you with a hole in the pocket and thanks to the Ministry of Civil Aviation jargonized concept of "unbundling of costs", private airlines can charge you for just about anything they deem fit.The ticket cost included something called the 'CUTE' charges in addition to the regular levies one had been paying so far. For a moment me and hubby were left wondering if it has got to do something with the cuteness of the baby tagging along with us! Much research later it manifested itself as Common User Terminal Equipment (CUTE) which means that passengers can reap the benefits of automated check-in from any CUTE enabled check-in counter, no matter to which airline they belong to. With all the years of economics behind me, I fail to understand this 'snowballing' of charges while one is already being made to shell out airport infrastructure and development fees. When I checked the trend at other international airports (like Cairns airport /Dallas-Fort Worth Airport) we only seem to be heading in the opposite direction. No wonder Malaysian low-fare carrier Air Asia  stopped flights to New Delhi and Mumbai from its Kuala Lumpur hub in March citing the steep increase in costs at the two facilities.Travel websites too seem to have taken a cue from the relaxed policy outlook on the matter and never forget to remind you of the convenience they afford, by charging a 'convenience fees' of Rs 300 per person over and above the ticket costs.

The bad luck had not even begun and as if flying with an infant is not a test of nerves enough, flying anywhere in this country on the eve of a National Holiday surely is. For me, nothing else could explain a kilometer long queue at the aircraft boarding gate whereby passengers were being made to open their baggage and each item physically examined by the crew members.As an officer myself, I appreciate the concern for security but checking loose articles from passenger baggage after the x-ray check makes no sense and if somebody intended real mischief, the crew members without any specialized equipment will clearly be unable to do much.

Upon my request for a loader to assist me with the checked-in baggage, I was politely informed by the air-hostess in her Indigo outfit, that the same shall be available near the conveyor belt. Upon reaching there however, unlike my previous trips, I was gladly informed that porter services at airports are a paid help now, just as it had been at the railway stations so far! Indian Railways however do not charge you for the infant, do they? Unlike our magnanimous Indian Railways, airlines ticket you for just about everything you carry on your person and that includes your infant too, no matter how young. Needless to mention, while you pay for the infant's boarding, you do not get a seat. 

This was just the beginning of an incredibly jinxed trip and due as I was to fly back on 13th (unlucky!), Hubby informed he has some official work in Delhi and would be flying back on 14th. The temptation of staying back for another day was too strong to resist and I immediately tried to reschedule my ticket.However, a rescheduling fee of Rs 1102 (Jet Lite) and a travel portal convenience fee of Rs 250 in addition to the fare differential of nearly 4K were too huge a cost per person to be borne for no apparent reason and much to the surprise of our staff in Lucknow, I flew back alone with the Small One, while Hubby joined us a day later.

The flight back home on 13th was the biggest challenge of all. While checking in my baggage, the lady at the counter requested me to make a payment of Rs 1500 before giving my boarding pass. I was flummoxed to learn the same. She informed me the charges @ Rs 250 per kg of extra baggage. It was the same 21 kg suitcase I had arrived in Delhi with and no significant additions had been made. Hubby, in particular, is overly cautious of airlines' baggage policy and while the free baggage ranges between 10-15 kg per passenger in economy for most airlines, between me and the Small One, we have always been way below the limit and I could never have imagined that airlines today are even free to choose their 'free' baggage allowance. The Jet Lite staffer in this particular case refused any free baggage allowance for the infant as per their airlines policy and insisted upon the payment of the said sum. I asked her the rationale behind the infant ticket in that case and she coolly informed me there are no levies apart from the 'fees and charges' in the ticket cost. I could have argued how is that different from my ticket cost in any case but decided to carry the Small One's diaper bag and feeding pillow as hand baggage (they permit 7 kg of that and weigh it just outside the boarding gate). 

Before taking my boarding pass however, I requested the intelligent lady , to put me on a left side window seat (A) as it would help me in feeding the infant during take off with some degree of privacy. The sensitivity and training of airline crew members, except for the infant safety instructions they have memorized by rote, is evident from the fact that the seat allotted to me was a left side aisle seat! The only lucky thing about the entire trip seemed to be an under-booked flight which enabled me to find a row of empty seats towards the back and I could thus nurse the baby in complete privacy and comfort. 

Leaving Delhi (where I grew up) and reaching Lucknow (my adopted hometown) had never been such a relief till this eventful journey I undertook with a six month old infant, three items of loose hand baggage and a checked-in suitcase weighing precisely 15 kg! Every cloud has its silver lining though and in this case, I found it to be literally true. The endless rain in Lucknow had resulted in a full rainbow arc in the sky and as I watched from the window of our plane, I forgot all the anguish I had nurtured through the journey and remembered Pablo Neruda's words, 

"Donde termina el arco iris, en tu alma o en el horizonte?

Where does the rainbow end,in your soul or on the horizon?"

Planetiquettes anyone?

How many steps would one associate with 'Travelling in a flight in India'? If experience serves me right, may be six- seven at max. Count- Airport check-in, Flight check-in, Luggage/Security Check, Taking the bus till the plane, Completing the journey, De-boarding/Alighting and lastly, Collecting the Checked-in Baggage. Does the law of the land bestow discretionary power on airlines to choose and pick their customers without necessarily having to comply with the steps above?...... (1)

Ever heard of an incident where a flight operator has deliberately refused boarding permission to someone with a valid boarding pass on the pretext of delay in take-off? Ever read about somebody left behind in the plane after landing only to discover himself in the cleaning bay (like it happens in trains and buses)? Has any passenger ever been made to walk till the arrival terminal because the airport bus drivers are off for lunch?...........................(2)

Is it possible under aviation rules in India to jump from an aeroplane taxiing on the runway in case of an emergency or an important business meeting? Reminds one of the opening scene in Three Idiots but has it ever been heard of from family and friends?.............(3)

If the answer to all the questions asked  above is a definite NO then why do we run and scramble and push and shove our way through the journeys? As it is, the Indian response to the word QUEUE is not genial enough and to make matters worse, we have multiplied that response by a standard multiple of indifference and unjustified haste.  The Reliance Net-connect Ad takes a dig on this very tendency. It is one thing to be smart and efficient in whatever one does and one understands that the open market era has completely transformed the pre-liberalization connotations of smartness and efficiency even in the popular mindset. But does it necessarily imply a near complete absence of kindness and consideration for the fellow passengers? While I firmly believe in gender equality, the elderly ladies and mothers with kids definitely deserve some extra time and space around them.

Repeatedly during domestic flights one witnesses cellphones ringing during landing and take off despite the umpteen requests and reminders from the crew members. If there were such important calls to attend, then why board the plane in the first place?! And once one has boarded, there seems no necessity to introduce oneself by loudly shouting over the phone. It is human and understandable that soaring in the skies gives a feeling of high and for the ambitious young men it is a realization of their long cherished dream to become a frequent flyer business tycoon but no matter how important one might be, if one is inside the plane the matters outside need to be put on hold. A crippling limitation as it might sound but given the current level of technological advancement it can not be helped.

Also learnt during the recent flight home, that the disposal paper bag provided for mid-air motion sickness has found new usage of being used as a spitoon for paan/gutka. Imagine the response it would evoke if the fellow passenger was- firstly, a lady; secondly and more importantly, not a paan/gutka addict. To add to the tale, the   gentleman didn't consider it even important to discard the same when the crew members collect garbage from every passenger. I instantly wondered- Is there a penalty prescribed for such actions under any law? If it were considered 'public nuisance', which court/ area will have jurisdiction over the same?

In college, I once learnt that despite the overwhelming presence of Indian diaspora in the West, it is not considered polite to open tiffin boxes carrying pungent smelling curry items/ pickles in closed spaces like flights, trains or air-conditioned boardrooms. But then the Western democratic traditions have reached the level of maturity where freedoms are perfectly counterbalanced by responsibilities and civic sense.

The mad rush for collecting the hand baggage from overhead luggage space even while the plane is taxiing is un-understandable. And so is the tendency to block space around the baggage reclaim conveyor belts by parking luggage trolleys all around. Unwieldy as these trolleys are, many a people get hurt while trying to scuttle past them. And this multi tiered structure also ensures that the people who have collected their baggage are unable to exit that easily because repetitive as it may sound, the passengers behind them are busy chatting on phones.

Strikingly, the arrival terminal at the Delhi's new spanking airport (T3) has a Buddhist theme and sports a beautiful ensemble of hands depicting various meditation mudras. Looking at them while one feels a strange calm from within, at the same time one also wishes that the Indian virtues of calm, peace and kindness were not forgotten as completely as the example of in-flight behaviour tends to demonstrate.