Never, Never, Never Again
Written: Feb 16 '02 (Updated Feb 18 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Are you kidding?
Cons: Everything.
The Bottom Line: The next time I hear that someone's recently flown Gulf Air, I'll be compelled to say, "I am so sorry."
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| arathi's Full Review: Gulf Air |
“The falcon flies for you over 50 destinations worldwide.” This is a fact. Gulf Air has been in operation since the 1950’s. This is a lesser known fact. Their inadequacies are legendary. This is the reverberating and most known fact about Gulf Air.
I am not the first one to speak out against them. Despite the fact that there are eleven other reviews about Gulf Air, most of them echoing my experiences, I feel duty-bound to speak out, yet another time, due to my horrendous experiences with them.
Five years after our marriage, my husband and I, were very excited about making our shared dream come true. We were going to take a 15 day vacation to Paris and most of Italy. We decided to leave our then 2 year old son with my parents in India, since we could not imagine dragging him through the Louvre, or expect him to appreciate the architectural nuances of the Pantheon! We flew out of Seattle to Bangalore (India) and used Singapore airlines and everything went really well. The journey was very pleasant. But, that’ll be a whole new review.
Fifteen days after reaching India, and after getting our son acclimatized to my parents and the surroundings, I bid a very tearful goodbye to him to set out for our Europe vacation. I had never stayed away from my son even for a single day, and thought that this would be the hardest thing to do.
We were to fly Gulf Air from Mumbai (India) to Paris, with a stopover in Abu Dhabi. It took over two hours just to get checked in at the Mumbai airport. There was only one counter, and the line to get checked in was about a mile long at least, if not more. But that did not bother me much, as my husband and I took turns waiting in line, and gave each other a break from waiting. We had brought a lot of reading material with us which served its purpose very well while waiting.
We finally boarded the flight, and one thing I noticed right away, was that nobody among the in-flight crew was ready to make eye contact with any passenger; leave alone smiling at any of us. I was very perplexed by this, but thought that things would improve once the flight took off. Nevertheless, the plane did not take off for about an hour after everybody boarded the plane. We did not get any explanation for this, and then the plane took off very suddenly.
Having flown on Singapore just a fortnight before Gulf, I could not help but compare these two airlines. The interiors did not do a nice job of concealing the ravages of time, it had withstood over the years. It had a weary and tired look. The color scheme did not help either. A light gray with a very light beige added to the somnolence. Dirt, wear, and tear show up very easily on colors like these, and you bet that they did on this airplane. The seats were narrow and leg room was non existent. And mind you, this comes from a person who stands petite at the height of 5’2”. My seat tray made a creaking noise when I tried to use it. The toilets were not clean even though it was just one hour since we boarded the plane. So, I think it will be fair to say that the passengers were not entirely at fault. In short, this was not the clean mean machine that I am used to on Singapore (my favorite airline).
The Abu Dhabi – Paris leg was pretty much the same. The flight was delayed to begin with, we encountered a similar plane, and the food was blah. But I was so excited about getting to Paris, that nothing bothered me too much.
After spending a very pleasant 15 day vacation in Europe, I had no regrets about ending the vacation. Even though, I had a lot of fun, I had missed my 2 year old son very much and was dying to meet him. This time we were to fly out of Rome to Mumbai and the Gulf air flight consisted of two legs; Rome- Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi – Mumbai.
The Rome to Abu-Dhabi was pretty much consistent with the one star rating that I had given Gulf on my earlier two flights. But the last leg of our journey, that is, the flight from Abu Dhabi to Mumbai ,is what makes me furious with Gulf. I would have forgotten the rest of the stuff, if not for what happened on the last leg on our journey.
As soon as we boarded the Abu Dhabi -Mumbai flight, we encountered a very arrogant stewardess, who went very short of pushing us into our seats. She seemed to be in a big hurry, and probably was taking the umpteen numbers of complaints about delayed flights very seriously. We quickly put our carry on luggage onto the over head compartments and got seated. The pilot announced over the microphone that the plane was about to take off shortly. The in flight crew went about their regular drill of seeing if the seat belts were fastened, seats were upright etc etc.
The arrogant stewardess (Unfortunately, I don’t know her name), went up to the front of our section and said that all our carry on luggage had to be absolutely stowed in the over head compartments. Since, all of us had already done that, we ignored her announcement. We then heard a very rude, “Don’t you all understand English?” That really enraged all of us! I was sitting way up in front and very close to where she was standing. Without a warning, she bent down to pick up my purse which was on lap; that was what she had meant by carry on baggage! I caught it mid way, but she proceeded to snatch my purse from me. She said that nothing and definitely nothing could be kept even underneath the seat while taking off. Now I’ve traveled about 50 times on an airplane, and on 10 different airlines, all around the world and I’ve always put my purse underneath the seat in front of me for take off. I’ve never been asked to put my lightweight 1'x1' purse into the over head compartment! I told her that she was being extremely rude, and even if there was a ridiculous rule like this, it could be implemented in a more polite way. She ignored me and gave me the silent treatment.
As she opened the overhead compartment to put my purse away, she took out one of our bags and declared that it was too big to be stored in the compartment. She wanted to put it with the strollers, and the other things that are stored in some unknown part of the plane. We had a couple of bottles of expensive wine in the bag, and my husband who was irritated with her by then said that he would not let that happen. How could the bag be too big when we could easily put in the overhead compartment? She did not say a word, and just dragged the bag away. She reappeared, and continued with her "random acts of violence" with other passengers, for a good 15 minutes. We were flabbergasted, and thanks to all this, a Gulf Air flight was delayed yet another time.
The plane took off, and the arrogant stewardess disappeared. None of us could actually believe that this had happened to us. After all this had sunk in, all of us wanted to see her to give her a piece of our mind (I am putting it very mildly). The whole in-flight crew stood by her and protected her. She mysteriously disappeared and we never got to see her again. The crew did not even want to give us her name. They gave us a very lame and fake apology, and said that they were all very stressed! The ground staff did not give us her name either. I will not even go into what happened to our bag.
Whenever I don’t have anything nice to say, about an experience, a product or service, I don’t do it right away. I wait for a while, step back, and try to look at the whole experience with impartiality. It’s been two and a half years since we took those flights on Gulf Air, and I still feel the same anger about their service. In fact, I feel annoyed at myself for not having done anything immediately. It is quite incredible that after 2 and a half years I still remember a lot about what happened on those Gulf Air flights. We tend to forget good experiences very quickly, but hang on to the bad ones for a lifetime. Well, its time to let go, but all I’ll say is never, never, never again.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
arathi
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Arathi Srikantaiah
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 42 members
About Me:
Aditi was born on Oct 9, 2004.
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