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| AI served stale cakes to passengers in Jammu-bound Flight 821 on Wednesday | | |
Bharat Bhushan
JAMMU, Sept 6: Air India, which was trying hard to become competitive with the rest of the world after it lost about Rs 600 cr due to the pilots' strike in May last, served stale cakes to its passengers of Delhi-Jammu Flight No 821 on Wednesday.
That they had been served stale cakes was discovered by a passenger when he broke his cake only to find that it contained infection threads. The cake served to the passenger next to him also carried fungus.
The passengers then brought the matter to the notice of an air hostess who, in turn, referred it to the seniormost crew member Parti. Parti listened to the complaint patiently and appreciated the passengers' concern, saying their feedback on such matters would help the airline improve its food quality.
On his advice, the passengers handed Parti a written complaint on the AI's suggestion card, a copy of which was with ET. When they told him that they wanted the cakes' analysis done by a food analyst in a J&K laboratory, he packed them in an AI envelope and gave it to them.
After the flight landed here at about 12.15 pm, the passengers called on Jammu airport manager Pramod Kumar who looked offensive from the very beginning. He straightway refused to put his official stamp and seal on the AI envelope containing the stale cake, saying he was not there to work on the passengers' directions.
"I have my own ways of working," he asserted and said that it was not possible for him to send the sample for examination to an "outside" food analyst. "At the most I can send it for examination to the AI lab in New Delhi," he said.
On the passengers' insistence, he later himself examined the cake and confirmed that it contained fungus and was not fit for human consumption. On board the flight, Parti too had confirmed that the cake was stale.
Pramod later got the in-flight complaint xeroxed for sending it separately to his bosses in New Delhi. After a lot of persuation and the heated exchanges that followed, he gave the passengers the acknowledgment of the complaint on its xeroxed copy.
Pramod said it was the fault of the caterer and not of the airline. However, when his attention was drawn towards the point that the caterer might have supplied the stale cakes to the Jammu-bound flight after having developed a nexus with the authorities concerned in AI, he preferred not to make any comment.
There was also a possibility of the caterer having supplied the same stale cakes to other AI flights too, the passengers felt.
Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh had some time back said that with no money coming, the airlines must become competitive with the rest of the world at the earliest.
The national carrier had suffered an estimated loss of about Rs 600 cr due to the pilots' strike in May. The strike was called to protest the management's decision to train pilots of the former Indian Airlines to fly Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. Sources at the Jammu Airport said the AI had most number of its flights cancelled (3.4 pc) between July 2011 and June this year. Most of these cancellations were due to technical, operational or commercial reasons apart from bad weather at the departing and destination stations, the sources added. |
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