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After completing her 8-day independent trip around India, Mai Linh will fly back to Ho Chi Minh City on her last day. She and her group of friends booked tickets with IndiGo Airlines, departing from Delhi, with an 11-hour layover in Kolkata, before arriving at Tan Son Nhat Airport.
"I thought the return flight would be as smooth as the outbound flight. But then something happened that made me never want to use IndiGo Airlines again," Mai Linh told Travellive.
She booked a flight at 3:20 PM, so she arrived three hours early. Mai Linh and her group were at the airport a little after 12 PM. However, they had to wait almost an hour to check in because the check-in counter staff were not serious or focused on their work. While processing passengers, this person constantly chatted and joked with colleagues.
"Watching his work style, I felt like I was watching a slow-motion scene from the TV series 'Bride of 8 Years'," Mai Linh commented.
The airport in Delhi is crowded.
Furthermore, the airline staff were not fully aware of the Covid-19 situation regarding passengers flying from India to Vietnam. When Mai Linh questioned why the staff were working so slowly, they replied that employees were allowed 15 minutes to process each passenger's paperwork. This meant that Mai Linh's group of five had to wait a full 75 minutes to complete the check-in process, which would normally only take a few minutes for other airlines.
Afterward, Mai Linh waited in a long line at customs, only reaching the boarding gate around 3 PM. However, the next flight changed gates, causing the group to waste more than ten minutes. Mai Linh and her companions missed their IndiGo Airlines flight back to Ho Chi Minh City.
"Right then, we ran to the customer service counter of this airline to ask for help. But all we received was more disappointment," Mai Linh recounted.
She asked the airline staff if they could be on the next available flight. Mai Linh was met with an indifferent remark that "there wasn't enough time for check-in." Meanwhile, the next flight wasn't scheduled to depart until around 5:30 PM. Mai Linh and her friend still had plenty of time for the airline to complete the booking, check-in, and security procedures. IndiGo Airlines promised to refund her money.
However, the airline staff kept passing the buck, with no one willing to resolve the issue. After waiting for three hours without a satisfactory solution, Mai Linh and her friends were forced to stay in Delhi for another day and find another airline to return to Ho Chi Minh City.
IndiGo Airlines is India's largest low-cost airline, serving over 35 domestic destinations in India, as well as five international destinations in Nepal, Oman, Singapore, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates. Founded in 2006, the airline has its main hubs at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and Visakhapatnam International Airport in Andhra Pradesh.
Mai Linh and her group on an 8-day trip in India.
IndiGo Airlines has received numerous complaints about its ineffective customer service. According to the BBC, Nandan Kumar, a software engineer, contacted the airline for help in finding lost luggage. When the airline refused to help, he exploited a system bug and retrieved the information himself.
Although he has recovered his luggage, Kumar said that the data on IndiGo's system should have been encrypted because anyone could access it. "It's very easy to obtain the Passenger Identification Number (PNR) and passenger names because many people like to share their boarding passes. Anyone can see the luggage, take pictures, and then use them to obtain personal information," Kumar said.
