It’s a recent anecdote. Me and my husband were travelling to our hometown on 6th march to attend some family function .As I was travelling to my in laws place, I was sporting a traditional saree and my husband a traditional kurta kind of thing.
We booked a flight from Hyderabad to Raipur of departure time- 12:05 pm with Jetlite. Jetlite experience was first for both of us as I am a fan of Indigo and my husband a kingfisher fan. We reached airport at 11 am on date of journey, as we had 65 minutes in hand we went to ATM for some cash withdrawal and then straight to Jetlite counter for check-in at 11:10am.
Lady at counter greeted us with warm smile and took our e-ticket. She entered all details and pressed enter …a long silence and she whispered to herself “No seat available”. After 2 min she said “you guys are late, you should have reached 45 min prior to departure for check In”. I argued that we reached 55 min prior to departure then she refilled our details and after pressing enter she reiterate the same line “Mam you guys are late”, I restated my fact of 55 min prior to departure time.
She called her supervisor and communicated her something – time was 11:18 by then. Supervisor entered all the values in the system and pressed enter and says “ you guys reached late” I lost my patience over that line but still controlling my words I said “Now it’s 11:18 and still we have 2 min as we know we have to reach 45 min prior to the departure time”. She said “Please be seated let me try my best to help you”. I thought “Is she helping us or doing her duty as mistake is from her side?” Me and my husband waited for 20 min, time was 11:40 then losing all hope of catching the plane we went towards her. She told that she is just communicating with concern department and she is doing her best to help us” Again the word “Help”. We kept our silence then by 11:50 am, we knew that we don’t hold any chance to catch this flight so went towards her. She repeated “I told you guys to be seated as I am doing only your work for last 25 min to help you to catch this flight”, This time I completely lost my patience on their unprofessionalism and I blasted “Excuse us Mam –Don’t go by our attire, we both are professionals and have travelled across India and abroad. We are very much aware of these rules and regulation. We are supposed to reach here 45 min prior to departure; we reached 55 min prior to dep. For last 30 min you are reiterating “You are trying your best to help us” but I think you are trying to rectify the mistake done by your system or something else and we are helping you by holding our silence for last 45 min”. She was stun to hear this from a sari cladded woman with pallu on her head. She immediately went back to her seat , handed our boarding pass to us and asked us to proceed to security. We rushed but on reaching at the terminal gate, we were denied to board the plane as time was 11:55 by then. We came back to the counter and this time my husband was in no mood to let go these jetlite guys. He told in counter “we want to talk to the manager not supervisor”. Manager came after some 5 min and told us “We are extremely sorry for all the inconvenience cause to you, You guys were well ahead of time but there was only 1 seat available for two of you and so we were not able to accommodate you on last flight. Flight was overbooked. We will pay back the ticket cost and a free ticket in our next flight at 2:40pm + a lunch at premium lounge”. We argued with him that when the whole case of seat denial to us was overbooking of flight then why for last 1 hr every employee was blaming us for being late. He had no answer except “sorry”. After the whole incident the only question in my mind was “Is jetlite training their employees Ways of fooling innocent people to whom they can fool and make money by overbooking flights? When everybody could see a message of “No seats available” still they were manipulating and trying their best to put blame back on innocent passenger? Think of a situation where we would have reached at 11:20 am, despite of having no seats for us in the flight they would have convinced us of being late and so a seat denial in flight. Airline industry is known for its hospitality and integrity but jetlite is a shame on its face. Be aware of such high profile thieves.
Regards,
Komal
9963051784