OK I am waiting for my flight in the Indira Gandhi National Airport in the capital city of India. There were four of us all in our early 2os. So we are waiting for our flight, tired and bored. This guy from Air India comes up to us and tells us that our luggage has exceeded the permissible 20 kgs. The guy was totally lying as we had checked to make sure that our luggage did not exceed the 20 kgs limit before leaving for the airport (that is the permissible limit in most of the Indian airlines). Then he tells us if we give him some money he could find some way for us. Of course we refused to give him the money. When we refused he goes and calls a cop and the freaking cop actually had the audacity to open our suitcases. The cop opens our bags and looks around, just because we refused to give them some money. Maybe we looked like some kids left on our own in the airport to them. God I swear I felt like punching them in the face. It was total harassment.
Tagged as:
air india,
airport,
baggage,
police
My favorite luggage tale happened at Christmas time, 2008. My family of five had spent a week sunning and diving in Grenada in the southern Caribbean. Air Jamaica has direct service from Grenada. Upon arriving at JFK, the 200+ coach passengers gathered around the carousel. After a long wait, only first class bags appeared. Perhaps 20 bags came down the chute. Certainly, we thought, our bags would follow. How wrong that thought was. Apparently, the ground crew in Grenada had not loaded a single coach bag. At 11 PM that night there were 240 angry coach passengers confronting a grand total of 2 agents from Air Jamaica. Not only did the crew in Grenada not load any bags, but they failed to notify the crew at JFK that extra staff would be needed that night to process the passengers and their missing luggage. While our bags arrived 3 days later on FedEx, the cost to the airline to ship over 300 suitcases must have been enormous.
While I rarely take the airline magazine with me, on this occasion I carried the Air Jamaica monthly in my knapsack. In the magazine was an article written by the director of customer service for Air Jamaica. In her article she stated, “our goal this holiday season is zero lost bags.” Obviously, her lofty goal had gone down in flames. Working my way through the Air Jamaica messaging system at their home base in Kingston, Jamaica, I reached her personally to let her know about the luggage disaster. Her first comment was, “you are not supposed to reach me, personally!” (an unusual comment from the head of customer service). After regaining her composure, she assured me she would look into the incident and get back to me. Eighteen months later I am still awaiting her call.
Tagged as:
air jamaica,
baggage
I flew back home to Germany from Lahore, Pakistan via Qatar with Qatar Airways as my husband comes from there and I was visiting his family. As I hadn’t thought about reserving a seat, I got the absolutely worst seat between two other people in the middle row!
On my right was an older woman who was obviously accompanied with her adult son. She was sitting dressed in her traditional stuff and her hand and nails were covered with henna color. During the flight the poor foolish woman prayed and murmured hysterically; it seemed to be her first time in an airplane. On my left was a black guy who was sitting steadily scratching his crotch. It was absolutely disgusting and I did hope that the pubic louses or whatever he seemed to have wouldn’t wander over to me.
So there I sat and suffered, staring at the brown-red and scruffy nails of the woman while she howled her mad prayers into my ear. She had her head turned towards me the whole time as she obsessivly stared to the window on the other side of the aisle. At the same time the guy scratched and scratched his genitals.
I don’t have any idea how I survived this nightmare. Awful!
Tagged as:
qatar airways
About 2 months ago, a flight I expected would be more pleasant than usual turned out to be a real flight from hell.
Before my flight, I used my miles to upgrade to first class on an AA flight. I thought this would make my flight much more comfortable than usual… I was wrong.
Next to me was sitting a woman who was 86 years old. I know this because I heard her talking to someone else. Her family was seated back in coach. Soon after take-off, the 86 year old lady sneezes and covered her entire face with snot. I mean her ENTIRE face. Given that I was still in a great mood, I happily took out tissues I had in my purse and offered all of them to her. I should have known this was an omen of a bodily fluid nightmare…
Half an hour later, I was brought my meal. As I was about to begin eating, my seatmate suddenly and explosively vomited. The flight attendant rushes to her aid and was able to fill 3 bags with her vomit! At that point, I was not able to continue eating the hummus dip I had been brought. You can imagine why.
Another half an hour later, as I am stepping around her to use the restroom, she vomits again in the same explosive manner. This time, some of her vomit actually got on my clothes! After cleaning myself out in the restroom, I come back to my seat to find a lot of people around her. Because she is so old, vomiting continuously poses a real health risk. Because of this crowd, I was asked to simply stand and wait. The problem, of course, was that we were experiencing turbulence and I felt unsteady and wanted to buckle up. The turbulence lasted another 40 minutes, and during that time I just stood and the sick lady vomited yet again. That whole area smelled terrible. For some reason that I still don’t know, her family members would give me rather harsh looks. I didn’t at ANY point say or make a face of any kind! In fact, I was more than helpful the whole time.
To top it off, because I couldn’t just stand while the plane landed, I was demoted to coach. There went my upgrade. They gave my seat to the old lady’s niece. I asked if I could get my miles back and very swiftly they said “NO.”
So, to finish this crazy story, I can only tell you that about two days later I woke up extremely nauseous… I wonder where I caught that stomach virus!!!!!
Tagged as:
american airlines,
illness & medical,
odor,
senior citizen,
vomit
