Editors¿ Choice?

IN Media Practice | 02/09/2002
Editors¿ Choice

Editors¿ Choice?

So is United Airlines a lousy airline which loses your baggage and treats Indian passengers shabbily? Or it is a world class airline that gives very special treatment to those in a position to write about it?

United Off to a Flying Start

Hindustan Times
27 July,2001

By Vir Sanghvi

United colours of bad behaviour

Indian Express ,
19 May 2001

By Shekhar Gupta

 

Advantages to travelling out of India at this time of year. Economy fares are cheap, many airlines offer free companion tickets in Business Class, and just for once, it isn¿t impossible to find a seat on a flight leaving India.
For anybody seeking to fly to London from Delhi, the problem was always quite simple: there are few direct flights. Neither Virgin nor Air-India would offer a daily service and all the other options required you to change planes in Amsterdam or Paris (surely, two of the world¿s least attractive airports) or some other place (Dubai, for instance, which at least is a nice airport).
That problem has now been remedied by the launch of the direct United Airlines flight to and from London every day. I once took the flight in the old days (before United took a break from flying to India) and while it was nice, it was nothing special. The current service, however, is perfect. The timings are right. You get into London ready to start your day and the daylight flight on the return journey is comfortable and convenient.
Best of all is United¿s service at IGIA. Headed by Atul Kumaria, the saviour of so many frequent travellers when he was with Jet Airways, the expert team offers - for my money - the best ground handling at IGIA. At London, I was fortunate to be assigned one of United¿s special handling persons. Given that I was leaving Heathrow at the busiest possible time, the process of getting on to the aircraft should have been hell. In fact, the smoothness of the special handling made it entirely painless.
BA¿s Business Class Nightmare
What you expect from First Class largely determines which airline¿s front cabin you prefer. I am a little unusual in the sense that while I like Emirates (universally popular), I absolutely loathe British Airways - the choice of most well-heeled Indians. British Airways Business Class also seems (to me, at least) to have less legroom than the competition.
Yet, despite the crappy service and lousy product (from my subjective perspective, anyway), most of us have no choice but to take it because of convenience - a flight every day. Speaking for myself, I always prefer Air-India because the on-time performance is good, the caviar is plentiful and the flight can be a delight if you have a good cabin crew. (An Air-India hostess does the work of four BA hostesses.)
But now, the race is over. Anyone who travels to London, pays for First Class and does not travel United, needs his or her head examined. Part of the new generation of First Class cabins, the United version has pods that turn into beds, video recorders so that you can choose your own video and all the other luxury add-ons that have now become standard fixtures.
What makes it special, though, is not the Dom Perignon. Nor is it the beds and the stereos. It is the quality of the service. Friendly without being obsequious and efficient without being intrusive, it must rank as the best First Class service in the business. For passengers flying out of Delhi, there¿s finally a world-class option.

 

Here is an important tip for rich NRIs. If you want to get your parents insulted, send them tickets to travel by United Airlines. Not only do its cabin crew patronise its first class passengers, they have a special talent for putting the economy classwallas in their place. And the older the passenger, the ruder they seem to get. On a flight between Delhi and London last week, an old couple, obviously visiting their well-to-do NRI son in the US, were not sure what the small plastic bottle the stewardess handed out to them contained. ¿¿Tell him it¿s waa-ter, waa-ter,¿¿ she told the old lady. The accent beat the old woman, leading to much sniggering until the lone Hindi-speaking stewardess was summoned and asked to help out amid generous giggles. Then came the turn of another old uncleji who was struggling a bit with his pouch of sugar. This upset yet another stewardess. ¿¿Now will someone tell him it is tea and he better not spill it on himself or others?¿¿ she asked no one in particular.

If the United crew find Indian passengers such a pain, why do they bother to fly to India? The truth is that they now bring 14 flights to New Delhi every week, one leaving every night for each coast of the US. If the planes are full, it is not because of some special magic worked by Rono Dutta, United¿s famed Indian CEO, but because - along with British Airways and Lufthansa - United is now fighting for the status of India¿s flag carrier. Who else can you blame if your own, alleged, national carrier is in such a mess, down to just about 20 aircraft and reaching you almost nowhere except the Gulf and a handful of western destinations? Any self-respecting nation deserves an airline that at least won¿t insult old people. We have run ours into the ground and will now take so long privatising it that by then the entire market would have been cornered by truly lousy airlines like United. And yet we will be squabbling about the value of this piece of family silver, there will be cries of it being sold for a song, PILs, strikes and so on.

By the way, I had better be careful just in case somebody at United is reading this. I have taken three flights with them over the week and they have already lost my baggage twice. I have two more before I reach home and I am counting my beads, a bit like the hapless old parents in the back rows. American humorist P.J. O¿Rourke once wrote Germans are so rude that it is not surprising that that is the country where Israelis learnt their manners. Now, I bet, Lufthansa would gain from getting United to train their crew.

 

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