I booked for three seats with Air india to go to Mumbai India and come back. while the Flight going to India, Like always ( this has happened to me the second time, the first time being last year) one of my bag got lost. I had to go back after 2 days to the airport to get it back. This was nothing compared to the ordeal I was about to go through. i had originally booked my and my families tickets to come back to the US on the 8th Feb. Due to some business reasons I had to change it to the 24th Feb 2008. I went to the airport in India to visit the Air India office and get this changed. after taking a solid hour the folks claimed to have gotten me all set. I got an e-ticket from Air india for my travel. My route was Mumbai - NY(JFK) - LAX. with the NY - LAX leg being operated by American airlines.
Come 24th, we boarded the plane and arrived in JFK as planned. This was a 16 hr non stop flight and quite exhausting. After going through the Immigration and customs we went on to check our luggage in. This went quite smooth and we arrived at the American airlines terminal. On arriving at the desk to take our boarding cards, I was told that there was some problem in the reservation, and the AA personel could see my reservation but could not get into the ticket to print the boarding card. This was not the case for my wife and kid and their boarding card was printed fine. After the AA person trying a couple of different ways, tried to call the Air india office in Mumbai. eventually when she went through, the person on the other end was able to see the reservation too and they went on trouble shooting this for an hour. eventually I got to talk to the air India person in Mumbai and what he told me was unbelieavable. He told me that there was nothing he could do and asked me to wait till the evening to talk to the Air India person in New york would arrive and 'probably' this person would help me out.
I was amazed at the ease in which this was told to me. As there was nothing anyone could do at this time, I had to go back to the Air India gate with my hand luggage and wait at their counter for someone from air india to arrive. I was Hungry, Tired and confused by this ordeal. The AA representative was nice enough to write down the problem my reservation had on the back of my e-ticket. Here is what she wrote :
TKT 0984100084535. When checking in, Error Message is 'No VCR Found ISSUE TKT OR COLLECT TKT USE TKT EDIT'
WHEN ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS TKT, MESSAGE IS ' SYSTEM UNABLE TO PROCESS' Called MUMBAI office, per mumbai office PAX are to be confirmed and ticketed on AA 21 @ 7 PM. PAX should be compensated ie. Meal voucher, Day hotel, ETAL JFK - AA - ATO. Spoke to Farshad in Mumbai.
Although a lot of this did not make sence to me, I was to use this to explain the Air india person in JFK to get me home.
after waiting for 5 hrs after my flight arrived at JFK, I could finally talk to someone with Air India about this. I was approached by a rather rude person, who challenged my issue and tried to muscle me into belieaving that this had nothing to do with Air India and that it was a AA problem. On my being pesuant and showing what was written by the AA representative. i was asked to talk to another person. after explaining the whole ordeal, to this new person. She started on the same lines - this is not an air india issue, its AA who has the problem. On insisting that she talk to a AA person to find out what was going on, she finally obliged ( probably feeling pity at the state of me, my wife and my 4 yr old). after talking to someone in AA, she still maintained that it was not Air india but AA who was at fault.
after a lot of persuation, she finally gave me some kind of a manual over ride ticket - ( a paper authorizing me to get a ticket to be issued ) which on taking to AA was able to fetch me the ever so ellusive boarding card. This was by far the worst experience I have had with Air India and want to see what legal action I could take to have this not happen to any other passengers.
