Hello,
Consider this to be a feedback from one person who took a return flight with Spice Jet (Delhi-Jammu - Delhi).
Me and my wife chose to try Spice Jet out enroute to the holy shrine of Vaishvo Devi. The flight to Jammu from Delhi was fine, although we could have done without the cookies dished out to us. The ordeal on our return trip is what prompted me to write this sweet stuff.
Let me spend a few lines building the background of how flights between Delhi and Jammu operate.
Spice Jet operates 2 filghts a day to Jammu and back , from Delhi. One leaves at 08:10 AM and the other one at 01:35 PM. Both flights land at Jammu , fly to Srinagar and then return to Delhi. The additional condition with flights having Srinagar on their itenary is that there is no aerial movement after 5:30 PM. Hence, if a flight leaves Jammu after 4:00 PM, it may run the risk of getting stuck up at Srinagar for the entire night.
Oh Yes, back to my ordeal now. We reached Jammu airport well in time for check-in and were informed by the Spice Jet counter that our flight is delayed by 7 hours and would be leaving at 3:15 PM instead of 9:20 AM. One could easily make out that the original filght was cancelled and we were clubbed in the second flight of the day. While at the airport, we were also informed by the Customer Care that our filght has been cancelled and we could choose to fly the same filght back to Delhi 2 days later. Like most of the other domestic players, Spice Jet would not provide boarding / lodging to over a 100 passengers, due to what was anything but the passengers’ fault. We (and few others) had to argue with their customer representatives at the airport (Kudos to their patience and perseverence!) to get us a seat on the second flight.
Following are some of the issues realised by us. Some went wrong, other could well have gone wrong:
There is no provision for boarding / logding for passengers who get delayed due to the airlines’ internal problems (This is true for all domestic airlines).
There is no back-up in terms of tie-up with other carriers (Low cost carriers can tie up with low cost carriers only), or other modes (Railway etc.)
The representatives at the airport and the customer care do not seem to pick up information from the same source.
There is a possibility of getting stuck up at Srinagar in case the aircraft does not manage to be airborne by 5:30 (Terrorists may see it in the dark and shoot it down while our radars might not!)
The root cause of most of our trouble was the fact that Spice Jet operates on a shoe string budget. They have no back up in their fleet. Hence if one aircraft developes a snag, flights in few sectors get affected. Spice Jet needs to reinforce their fleet and thus add Spice.
Spice Jet - I hope you are reading.....