My wife and I travelled Jet Airways from Mumbai to Hong Kong for the first time, after many friends and relatives recommended the airline’s quality & service to us. However, our experience with Jet has put us off the idea of EVER travelling with Jet Airways again in the future, even if the tickets were free of charge!
In my 12 years of travelling, I have never gone through such stress and hassle as we did when we flew BOM-HKG by Jet on August 1, 2010.
Our flight was at 01:05 a.m. We arrived at the airport by 10 p.m. on July 31, 3 hours prior to check in. When we reached the check-in counter around 10.30 p.m., we handed over our passports and e-ticket to the lady, and placed our check-in luggage on the belt to be weighed.
1) CHECK-IN TROUBLES - 1:
That’s when our troubles began. The lady informed us that we had excess luggage. She then made us weigh our hand baggage, and then told us that we had 25 kilos excess baggage in all, and would have to pay about INR 16, 800 for excess luggage. We were stunned! We always weigh our bags before we leave home, to avoid precisely this problem. She said it is clearly mentioned on your ticket that check-in allowance is 20 kilos per pax. Now, both of us have been flying for a long time, and all airlines allow upto 28 kilos no questions asked, even though it’s printed only 20 kilos on your ticket. Also, our friends and relatives had mentioned that Jet had allowed them 30 kilos when they had travelled. Furthermore, my wife had travelled by Jet a week earlier, and she had checked in 34 kilos that time. When we told all this to the lady at the counter, she remained quite adamant, and even after we told her that we had no way to return some of the extra luggage to our home, she said that it was our problem, and did not concern her in any way. By this time it was around 11 p.m. and the lady asked us to move to the side and decide what we wanted to do, she claimed we were holding up the other passengers. We left the counter, and decided to get rid of one of our hand luggage to adjust to the allowed weight. Having no other option, I went outside and handed over my hand carry to a taxi driver with my address and Rs. 1000, and asked him to drop off the bag at my apartment at Pali Hill, Bandra.
2) CHECK-IN TROUBLES – 2:
Our troubles didn’t end there. We then went back to the check-in counter, and the lady proceeded to check us in. She informed us that my wife and I would not be seated together on the plane, as we had checked in very late and there were no seats available together. She also wrote “No hand baggage” across my wife’s boarding pass. I lost my cool and asked to speak to her supervisor. The supervisor told us the same thing, and was not helpful at all. I told her that when we first came to the counter to check-in, she should have blocked 2 seats for us, as she knew we had valid tickets for travel on that day. That’s what any professional airline like Cathay or Kingfisher would do. Also, what did they mean by writing anything on the boarding pass, they could see that we had only 1 hand carry between the two of us, and did they not trust their customers.
It was already 12.20 a.m. by then, so we quickly proceeded to immigration & security check, where there was a long queue, and we were caught up till about 1:10 a.m. – past the take-off time for our flight. A Jet Airways employee came looking for us, and hurried us through security, and we had to actually run to the gate to board the bus which would take us to the aircraft. We were the last ones to board, and the flight was waiting for us to take-off. Still not the end though!
3) ONBOARD TROUBLES:
Since we had separate seats, we decided to be seated separately for take-off, and later request our fellow passengers to exchange seats. My wife reached her assigned seat, and found that another passenger had been assigned the same seat! This was the height of unprofessionalism by Jet Airways! The cabin crew asked my wife to sit wherever there was an empty seat just for take-off, and they would sort the matter out later. We refused to comply, as we had had enough trouble from Jet Airways that night. The cabin crew offered to upgrade my wife to Business Class, thinking that it would settle the matter. However, we insisted on being seated together, it didn’t matter whether it was in Economy or Business Class. Since the flight was overbooked, there was only 1 extra seat in Business Class, so the cabin crew offered the upgrade to another passenger, and arranged for us to be seated together in Economy. The flight finally took off 45 minutes late.
We have never suffered such stress or hassle on any of our trips on any other airline, as we did with Jet airways. Looked like a set of rookies were handling the ground operations…highly unpro