My thoughts on the Jet Airways flight

I have always been a big fan of Jet Airways and when they started their international services to the Middle East, Europe and North America, I was extremely happy for them. 6 flights later on the Indo- Canadian route, I had started recommending this airline to every international traveler I knew.

But, the jinxed 229 flight from Toronto to Delhi via Brussels saw the end of it all. As already mentioned on this blog, Jet Airways is good as long as it flies on time. What the airline management lacks completely is a Disaster Recovery Plan and what a disaster it was that the poor passengers had to encounter on the night of 12 December! The airline had announced by around 7 PM EST that the flight is likely to take off at around 2 AM. I had approached the airline counter then and I could hear a crew member telling another passenger that they were looking at arranging accomodation for all stranded passengers. The crew had already left the airport by then which made me think that the airline had already decided not to fly that night. I don't understand why they took all the time in the world to announce that the flight had been cancelled. (The announcement was made as late as 1.30 AM)

OK, deciding to provide hotel accomodation to all the stranded passengers was a good thing to do, but how about providing it on time? To start with, the airline wanted all passengers to collect their check in baggage which was absolutely unnecessary. And on top of that, there were not enough cabs available to transport the passengers to the hotel. This resulted in the passengers waiting outside the airport for a good hour and half waiting for cabs. The less said about the weather, the better. I personally was frost bitten by the time I checked into the Hotel room.

More chaos followed the next day afternoon. The queue at the check in counters was endless. There were 16 counters available, but only 4 were functioning. With the passengers checking in for 2 flights together, there was confusion all around. It resulted in both flights getting delayed by a good 2 hours!!!

OK, after all, a passenger would expect the airline to be prepared when the flight lands in Delhi. The answer to that was a big NO! More confusion prevailed- connections were not arranged, cabs were not available to transport the passengers to the hotel (which funnily was a good 45 minute drive from the airport, why was the accomodation not arranged somewhere close by is the other pertinent question) and there were no adequate rooms at the hotel. The big relief was that a buffet dinner was available at the hotel as late as 2 in the morning that provided some respite to the otherwise disturbed passengers!

One week from the whole episode, I am still trying to figure out how could an airline go so awfully wrong? In hindsight, they did provide everything that a passenger could have asked for but nothing was provided on time which remains the biggest drawback! Let us hope that the airline is better equipped next time something like this happens (and I hope, it does not happen when I am on board!)...