Waiting for your flight to board
Recently I was sitting at Bangalore Airport waiting for my Flight to board. There I was minding my own business. I hear an announcement encouraging a passenger (lets call him Ramesh for this purpose) to board a certain flight immediately, they are about to close the gate…. Blah…Blah….Blah. The same announcement was done in English, Hindi and Kannada (the local language). Some of you may not find anything unusual about this, but in the space of about 7 minutes the announcement was repeated another 2 times (each time in 3 languages) for this Ramesh to show up.
Having traveled the globe extensively, I can just about bet my last buck that this practice will not be adopted in other countries. Passengers are expected to turn up 10 minutes before departure or risk missing the flight. Plain and simple. Atleast this is what I have been led to believe.
Do we coddle our passengers too much in India? Do we treat them like little children that need to be reminded constantly what they need to do?
OR………
Perhaps Mr. Ramesh’s bags are already loaded on the plane. In the brave new world we live in… planes cannot fly with unaccompanied baggage. So for the airline, it is a lot easier to remind, cajole, coax, plead, beg Mr. Ramesh to board the plane than to deny him boarding and have to spend another 15 minutes sorting through the baggage compartment to offload Ramesh’s bags? While at the same time risking holding up and upsetting a plane load of passengers that have responsibly boarded on time.
OR……….
This scenario probably applies well to India… Mr. Ramesh is a VVIP and closing the gates in his face and denying him boarding perhaps will not win the Airline any favors with who he knows.
Whatever the reason, it sure is paaaaaaaaaaaaaainful to sit in the airport listening to these stupid announcements over and over again.
