Recently, I took a trip to Goa from New Delhi on Spicejet after a long long time. I generally fly Indigo but wanted to give Spicejet another try.
But I am sorry to say that I was totally mistaken that Spicejet must have improved. My experience on the flight from Goa to Delhi on 15th August 2015 that departs at 1:35 PM from Goa was horrible to say the least.
I am a frequent flier and have flown more than 5, 00, 000 Kms in life with different airlines but I have never felt as humiliated and helpless as I did on the flight that day.
The main reason for this was your flight crew. The ladies who were part of the flight attendant crew were the worst I have experienced.
So what all went wrong:
- They made us sit in horribly hot, humid and suffocating conditions without any air-conditioning in flight for about 30 minutes prior take off. This was very inconvenient for a lot of passengers with kids and infants on the flight. One can understand the genuine trouble but when we complained about this with the cabin crew, they instead of feeling apologetic, primarily started citing clauses in some aviation rules that this was OK and passengers should bear with this without making any fuss.
Then the captain, the Navy veteran, easily announced that this was a’Minor’ incident and passengers should not react. This really pissed off a lot of passengers and they decided to not let the flight take off. All this behaviour by staff of Spicejet was very much against the ethos of customer service that the company so proclaims.
- Then after a while, when it was time for serving lunch, we realized that there was some trouble as to why are we not being asked for lunch even after 1.5 hours of taking off. The flight was a afternoon flight between 1:30 to 4:15 pm, a prime time for lunch for 90% passengers. But we soon realized that the food was over and that is why they were not serving anyone.
When confronted, again the reaction of the customer care staff - specially one named "Rajkumari" was as if we have asked for her to cook for us. I had kids who were hungry and crying and when I spoke with her about why we are not getting any lunch, she started laughing at me and making fun of our situation with other cabin crew staff.
A lot of people with kids were having a very tough time just thinking what to feed the crying kids? Now, the captain came out of the cockpit to go to the restroom and I went to complain to him about the lack of food and he too started smiling and asked me to talk to the cabin crew as this was their responsibility.
I am appalled to say the least that Spicejet’s crew that day was behaving as if they have made their mind to make it absolutely horrible for people and to give the airline a bad name, in which they were totally successful.
To say the least, I will never fly Spicejet again and will also share this experience with my family and friends and do them a big favour.