Air India’s 30-hour delayed flight: Many struggled to get check-in bags on arrival in San Francisco

NEW DELHI: A 30-hour-delay wasn’t the end of the ordeal for passengers who flew the Air India Delhi-San Francisco (SFO) flight on May 31. On arrival in California, some of them — again after a long wait — couldn’t locate their checked-in baggage.
Indian Oil Corp former chairman R K Malhotra’s wife Sudha Malhotra (70) was one of the 199 passengers who eventually chose to fly on AI 183 that took off at 10 pm on May 31.The flight, supposed to leave 30 hours ago, had 237 (and one infant) passengers booked on it but 38 opted out following the long delay.

“Sudha flew AI-183 to USA. After a long waits of almost two days at Delhi Airport when the flight reached SFO at midnight, both her bags were nowhere to be found. She searched for over an hour. Same was the case with some other passengers. The airport staff at SFO offered help to fill up form. They messed up by attaching her bag tags on a partially filled up form of another passenger with same surname but different initials,” Malhotra said.

“My wife was physically and mentally exhausted. She has a knee problem and was unable to stand. She just took a picture of the form without verifying details on the form filled by AI staff. Then one other staffer noted the correct address of my son in San Jose and accordingly altered the form. The bags had all her clothing and more importantly her medicines and knee support fittings. They were checked-in on May 30 at Delhi Airport at 12:30 pm,” he said. AI later located her bags and sent them to the son’s house in San Jose.

The airline has given a $350 voucher to the 199 people who eventually chose to go on this delayed flight. Malhotra, however, says the same “is hardly any compensation for the inconvenience” to the passengers.
Air India has “sincerely apologise(d)” to passengers of this flight. Following multiple delays of North America nonstops — AI’s USP as the airline overflies Russia and offers the fastest connectivity to US and Canada

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the flights leave on time — the top Tata leadership at Bombay House is also learnt to have spoken to the management of the airline they took over almost 2.5 years ago and whose turnaround is still awaited by flyers. Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran is learnt to be keeping a close watch on the airline.
AI chief operations officer Klaus Goersch wrote to these passengers on Saturday: “Please allow me to sincerely apologise on behalf of Air India for the extended delay in bringing you to San Francisco, which was caused by several technical delays and other operational constraints. We have endeavoured to rectify the technical issues, but clearly, the duration of delay was long, and the experience was not what we aspire to offer. However, your safety was the highest priority throughout.”

“As a gesture of apology, we would like to offer you a travel voucher worth $ 350, for future travel on Air India. Alternatively, we could credit this amount to you through your source of payment or bank details. Although we cannot change the past, I trust that this gesture conveys our sincere regrets for the disruption and inconvenience,” Goersch said, adding, “Once again, we are very sorry for this lapse in our service and the inconvenience caused to you…. I hope you will allow us to serve again, to a better standard, in future.”
The airline has to reply to a DGCA show cause notice where it has been asked to explain why action should not be taken against it over “repeated incidences of passengers being put to discomfort” & “time and again failing to take due care of passengers.”
The DGCA notice issued Friday says: “Al179 of 24/5 & Al 183 of 30/5 were inordinately delayed. Passengers were put to discomfort due to insufficient cooling in the cabin. Repeated (instances) of passengers being put to discomfort by Air India in violation of various DGCA provisions have come to notice…. AI has violated provisions of ‘facilities to be provided to passengers by airlines due to denied boarding, cancellation of flights and delays in flights’. AI is time and again failing in taking due care of passengers and compliance of (those rules),” the DGCA notice says. AI has been asked to explain within three days “why enforcement action (should) not be initiated against” it. SFO-bound AI 179 from Mumbai last Friday was delayed by 18 hours.
Soon after these two, AI’s Delhi-Vancouver of June 1 was delayed by over 20 hours.