Stop eating up flyers' food, Air India tells stewards

[Blackwater]

NEW DELHI: Air India has issued a circular asking cabin crew to behave themselves mid-air, in the face of many complaints about them consuming passengers' meals and their boisterous guffaws in the galley area.

Since the complaints came from first class passengers, the airline wasted no time in issuing the fresh circular on September 5 (TOI has a copy). The circular to the cabin crew talks about the manner they have to "eat" and "talk" during flights.

A senior AI official said the airline was getting complaints that cabin crew ate the passengers' meals in front of passengers during the flights.

The crew now has been told to speak softly while in the galley, which is close to the first class seats, and draw the curtain down while having food. In each flight, the meals are uplifted as per the number of passengers and the cabin crew keeps some of the food packets for their consumption during flights.

In the circular, the airline has instructed the cabin crew to be restrained while eating their personal and the airline's meals. As per some complaints, on many occasions, cabin crew group together to eat meals in the aircraft, delaying the response time to attend to passengers' call during flights.

The circular clearly said the crew has to take meals in turn so that sufficient numbers are available to attend to calls. The circular also instructed the crew to quietly work in the galley and speak softly as passengers in first class were getting disturbed.

The cabin crew heads have been asked to check all documents relating to the flight beforehand as in the past, there were instance that the immigration cards of wrong country were kept in the flight, resulting in an embarrassing situation. Grapping with the financial losses and turnaround strategies, the airline cannot afford to upset passengers in both domestic and international sectors.
Stop eating up flyers' food, Air India tells stewards - The Times of India

 

[KSP]

Hahahahaahhaa

 

[Ray]

Eating the insipid airline food is the ideal way to be on diet and be slim!

AI should encourage it since their air hostess are FAT, ugly and rude!

At least if they are thin or manageable, one can go to the toilet when they are moving in the aisle!

 

[Blackwater]

Eating the insipid airline food is the ideal way to be on diet and be slim!

AI should encourage it since their air hostess are FAT, ugly and rude!

sir ray probelm is not this. Probelm is in red


A senior AI official said the airline was getting complaints that cabin crew ate the passengers' meals in front of passengers during the flights.

 

[Tolaha]

They chose to send a circular! All that the management should have done was fire those who ate passenger's meals right in front of the passengers! And no need to send a memo after that! There would be a strike called and the whole world would know about it anyway!

 

[parijataka]

This is too bad, eating the passengers food in front of them...

 

[cloud_9]

People don't really feel like eating after looking at all those rude middle aged women anyway

 

[lcatejas]

They don't want to miss the chance of eating flyers food because they don't know when they will get the chance after all "AI Staff love to Strike"

 

[utubekhiladi]

one more reason, why not to fly air india

 

[Singh]

Food sucks on AI flights. And they served dessert wine with food. AI only when its necessary

 

[Blackwater]

Food sucks on AI flights. And they served dessert wine with food. AI only when its necessary

phaaji here they are talking of first class food. i think it will be of good Quality.




that i agree in red

 

[aeroblogger]

This article is absolute rubbish. As someone who has actually read the circular mentioned, I can tell you that the only complaint was that the cabin crew were talking too loudly in the galley. It also mentioned that the galley curtain should be closed when crew rations are consumed. There is no mention of passenger meals at all.

You should take aviation "journalism" with huge buckets of salt - except for a few good reporters (Tarun Shukla, Kushan Mitra, etc.) most have no understanding of the industry whatsoever, and are just looking for sensationalist articles.

Also, AI gets a larger percentage of bad press than it deserves - it is the only airline which does not pay for articles to be written "properly" - this article is utterly irrelevant compared to the memo sent out by Kingfisher maintenance last week, or the DGCA notice regarding Jet Airways' and IndiGo's operations at Patna airport, but those were nicely hushed up to avoid passengers running away in droves.

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Last time 2 times I flew Air India they always managed to screw something up losing bags or
giving my seat to someone else when i bought 6 months ahead of time,separating my kids
who were very young from me and my wife when seats were bought together etc..
Since then I have flown Qatar and Lufthansa blow Air India away any day. Air India has earned
it's bad reputation, most of my relatives would probably cancel a trip to India if they had to fly air Indian.

 

[aeroblogger]

Last time 2 times I flew Air India they always managed to screw something up losing bags or giving my seat to someone else when i bought 6 months ahead of time,separating my kids who were very young from me and my wife when seats were bought together etc..

Seats are not guaranteed on any airline. AI is required by law to open all seats to government officials traveling on official business, so you should always choose seats closer to the back..

Since I have Air India Gold status, I almost always get the seat I want.

As for losing bags, it happens from time to time. AI has lost my bags once in 48 flights with them in the past 12 months. Not the end of the world.

Since then I have flown Qatar and Lufthansa blow Air India away any day.

In what respect? In ground service, both airlines are pretty much guaranteed to blow AI away. AI is handled by a company (Singapore Airport Terminal Services) which is accountable to nobody, and owned by the buddies of various politicians related to the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

In terms of catering, AI is almost guaranteed to blow both QR and LH out of the water. AI has the largest catering budget per passenger in all of Asia, and it usually shows.

In terms of reliability, it's a mixed bag. I recently was affected by the Lufthansa strike this month... United has lost my bag more times than I can count.

In terms of on-time performance, United posted a 64% on time rate last month. Air India posted an 82.1% rate. IndiGo posted a 90%+ rate... Yet, I only faced a cancellation with IndiGo. Does that mean that IndiGo's operation is in shambles or that they are unreliable? No! It just means that I was unlucky.

Air India has earned it's bad reputation, most of my relatives would probably cancel a trip to India if they had to fly air Indian.

Airlines cannot be judged by one-off experiences. The aviation sector is incredibly inconsistent, and no airline can be so narrowly defined.

My best flight ever has been on Turkish Airlines. My worst flight ever has also been on Turkish Airlines. I can't say that TK is good, but I can't say they are bad either. Every experience is somewhere on the spectrum...

 

[LETHALFORCE]

Seats are not guaranteed on any airline. AI is required by law to open all seats to government officials traveling on official business, so you should always choose seats closer to the back..

Since I have Air India Gold status, I almost always get the seat I want.

As for losing bags, it happens from time to time. AI has lost my bags once in 48 flights with them in the past 12 months. Not the end of the world.


In what respect? In ground service, both airlines are pretty much guaranteed to blow AI away. AI is handled by a company (Singapore Airport Terminal Services) which is accountable to nobody, and owned by the buddies of various politicians related to the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

In terms of catering, AI is almost guaranteed to blow both QR and LH out of the water. AI has the largest catering budget per passenger in all of Asia, and it usually shows.

In terms of reliability, it's a mixed bag. I recently was affected by the Lufthansa strike this month... United has lost my bag more times than I can count.

In terms of on-time performance, United posted a 64% on time rate last month. Air India posted an 82.1% rate. IndiGo posted a 90%+ rate... Yet, I only faced a cancellation with IndiGo. Does that mean that IndiGo's operation is in shambles or that they are unreliable? No! It just means that I was unlucky.

Airlines cannot be judged by one-off experiences. The aviation sector is incredibly inconsistent, and no airline can be so narrowly defined.

My best flight ever has been on Turkish Airlines. My worst flight ever has also been on Turkish Airlines. I can't say that TK is good, but I can't say they are bad either. Every experience is somewhere on the spectrum...

when I flew Qatar I was caught in a snow storm in JFK where I though my flight would be
cancelled but they took off even with a foot of snow on the ground though delayed when
I got to Qatar they had all the passengers stay in what i would say was one of the best
motels I have been in. To keep it short without going into too many details I had to change
3 flights to get to India the last one Qatar was booked but they got all the passengers on
Emirates. So after 48 hours and 3 different airplanes 1 connecting flight not one bag was
lost from 12 bags. I would like to fly Air India but they have disappointed too often.
I did not want to go into a bad details but last air india flight the toilets had a problem and
passengers had to wait for hours before relieving themselves. But my worst experience
was not air India but a domestic air line US air where I was stranded in Texas for 1 week before
they could confirm a flight because of a hurricane.

 

[Blackwater]

In 2000 i went to UK to study. I was getting Air India 20,000 one way and British airways 26000. My dad choose British airways for obvious reasons


for some reason, money does not matter

 

[aeroblogger]

when I flew Qatar I was caught in a snow storm in JFK where I though my flight would be cancelled but they took off even with a foot of snow on the ground though delayed when I got to Qatar they had all the passengers stay in what i would say was one of the best motels I have been in. To keep it short without going into too many details I had to change 3 flights to get to India the last one Qatar was booked but they got all the passengers on Emirates. So after 48 hours and 3 different airplanes 1 connecting flight not one bag was lost from 12 bags.

That's a very impressive experience. I can definitely see why you prefer flying Qatar.

Then again, you didn't give AI the chance to handle the situation equally well, if not better. In reality, AI's handling of this situation would have probably been a disaster for you unless you held Flying Returns elite status or were a government official. As I mentioned in the post above, SATS (AI's ground handler) is the single biggest blot on the Air India experience, but nothing will change as long as the current group of politicians gets thrown out.

I would like to fly Air India but they have disappointed too often. I did not want to go into a bad details but last air india flight the toilets had a problem and passengers had to wait for hours before relieving themselves.

Issues like toilets breaking or bags getting lost are not unique to Air India.

AI usually does have a higher rate of inop hardware compared to international competitors, but that's mostly just because they serve the Indian market - even airlines like BA and Lufthansa budget extra time for cleaning and cabin maintenance in the turnaround after an Indian flight.

But my worst experience was not air India but a domestic air line US air where I was stranded in Texas for 1 week before they could confirm a flight because of a hurricane.

This is another example of where elite status comes in very handy. There are ways to get elite status conveniently (A3 most notably), and it really pays off in irregular operations and such.

 

[aeroblogger]

In 2000 i went to UK to study. I was getting Air India 20,000 one way and British airways 26000. My dad choose British airways for obvious reasons


for some reason, money does not matter

Just shows that perception is more important than reality.

AI's reputation is in tatters, and that is why it is so unsuccessful as a business. In reality, it is not significantly different than its competitors, especially in economy class.

 

[Blackwater]

Just shows that perception is more important than reality.

AI's reputation is in tatters, and that is why it is so unsuccessful as a business. In reality, it is not significantly different than its competitors, especially in economy class.

world runs on perceptions mate.

anyhow british service and air hostess and in-flight entertainment system was better than air india at that time. checked with few fellow Indians who came by airindia



At the end of the day, What a tharki punjabi wants, good food and good gori air hostess you see

 

[aeroblogger]

world runs on perceptions mate.

Absolutely.

anyhow british service and air hostess and in-flight entertainment system was better than air india at that time. checked with few fellow Indians who came by airindia

If you're talking about pre-2007, when the (unrefitted) 747s were flying to LHR, you are absolutely right. If you're talking about after the 777s started serving LHR, it's not so clear.

At the end of the day, What a tharki punjabi wants, good food and good gori air hostess you see