Our arrival in India for our first visit did not start well. Two tips - don't travel with Air India and do arrive at your final destination from an international departure point.
We left London for Delhi two hours late on Christmas day and the flight never made up time which meant we had little time to get through immigration, collect our cases and make our way to domestic departures. The up shot was we arrived at the departure gate to find it closed although the plane was still there and the pilot passed us on his way to the cockpit.
No amount of persuasion worked and we had to return to the booking hall to arrange a new flight. This took hours leaving us feeling imprisoned - we could not go through to departures and could not leave the building due to the security on the entrance. Customer care is definitely not an Air India consideration at all.
To compound the misery we had to wait over 7 hours for the next flight and when we did arrive in Cochin our cases had been left in Delhi! Oh the joys of international travel.
From this low point things picked up as Shajoo and Biju were there to calm us down and drive us to our hotel. Unbeknown to us they returned to the airport to meet the next flight and brought our cases to the hotel ready for the morning.
The lesson is that Indian officialdom is a nightmare but the people of India could not be more helpful or hospitable!
We left London for Delhi two hours late on Christmas day and the flight never made up time which meant we had little time to get through immigration, collect our cases and make our way to domestic departures. The up shot was we arrived at the departure gate to find it closed although the plane was still there and the pilot passed us on his way to the cockpit.
No amount of persuasion worked and we had to return to the booking hall to arrange a new flight. This took hours leaving us feeling imprisoned - we could not go through to departures and could not leave the building due to the security on the entrance. Customer care is definitely not an Air India consideration at all.
To compound the misery we had to wait over 7 hours for the next flight and when we did arrive in Cochin our cases had been left in Delhi! Oh the joys of international travel.
From this low point things picked up as Shajoo and Biju were there to calm us down and drive us to our hotel. Unbeknown to us they returned to the airport to meet the next flight and brought our cases to the hotel ready for the morning.
The lesson is that Indian officialdom is a nightmare but the people of India could not be more helpful or hospitable!
No comments:
Post a Comment