Air India turned T3 shift into a nightmare,Air India,Air India T3 shift

How AI turned T3 shift into a nightmare

A completely unprepared Air India management has turned the promised world class experience of flying in and out of terminal 3 (T3) into a truly third class one for passengers. Friday saw 55% of all AI flights out of T3 getting delayed by at least an hour. AI CMD Arvind Jadhav told TOI that schedules will be back to normal by Saturday.

But even aviation authorities are not sure how long AI will take to sort out the mess due to the management's shocking lack of planning. It decided to do everything at once: Increase flights from 486 per week to 770 and launch a hub-and-spoke model for its flights that works on feeder domestic flights arriving with clockwork precision and their passengers filling up long-haul wide-body aircraft to the rest of the world.

The operations were increased just before Diwali, when the airline was facing a shortage of cabin crew. In effect, not only did the airline not have enough for its previous number of flights, it started facing a massive shortage when operations were increased. ``At one time, 108 of the 500 cabin crew in Delhi were on leave. Now all leaves have been cancelled and that figure's down to 15-20,'' Jadhav said.

While the shortage was known for a very long time, the airline is now hiring cabin crew but it will be months before they get trained to start flying. In fact, the first round of walk-in interviews started only on November 10.

Apart from cabin crew, AI's ground handling capacity for passenger interface services like baggage and check-in were also not shored up. Only now, three external agencies have been hired to plug the yawning gaps in the AISATS's virtually dysfunctional ground handling and baggage services. Ground handling for 25 flights have been outsourced.

AISATS is the JV formed for handling AI's ground and baggage services. ``AISATS was supposed to hire adequate staff before the T3 shift. It hired some 22-23 year-old graduates but they left in droves after seeing angry passengers threatening to bash up AI officers. AISATS has let AI down,'' a sources said.

Jadhav said that the airline has hired almost 200 more people and is still getting more on its rolls. ``We have got exemptions for certain functions that earlier could not have been outsourced but will now be handled by other agencies,'' he said.

To make IGI Airport their hub, the airline was supposed to draw up tight schedules, the success of which hinged on timely operation of each flight. Even one feeder getting delayed means either the longhaul flight waits for it to arrive, thereby delaying other passengers on board, or it takes off without those scheduled to be on the connecting flight. Not surprisingly, tales of passengers not getting baggage, missing flights or waiting for hours have become common.

But the story that's become most famous internally is of a pilot who reached the plane cockpit in time for the flight. After waiting for almost 1.5 hours in vain for any passenger or cabin crew to reach the aircraft, he alighted from the plane to go for a stroll. ``It was safer inside the aircraft or on the tarmac as angry passengers waiting for flights and baggage were threatening to beat up AI guys inside the terminal,'' he is reported to have told his family on phone.

Having taken a cue from the AI fiasco, aviation authorities monitoring Jet and Kingfisher's shifting of domestic operations to T3 have asked them to adopt an exactly opposite strategy. ``They will first shift existing operations to T3 and wait for them to stabilize before increasing operations. Making T3 their hub will be the final stage after the first two things have been successfully established,'' said a top government official.

When asked if AI's timing for all the major changes was correct, Jadhav admitted that there problems but said the shifting of operations to T3 around Diwali was not expected. ``We filed for the winter schedule flights in August, expecting operations from hub T3 by September. That way we were to get a month before Diwali to settle down. But the date changed. Our operations depended on having domestic and international operations work together and chose to shift as soon as possible even if it meant shifting three to four days ahead of other airlines to settle down,'' he said.

Jadhav added that there were other glitches -- like problems with the sophisticated baggage software -- that marred the T3 experience for passengers.

Airline sources added that the sheer size of T3 was also causing huge problems. ``When we anticipated that some work would be done in 10 minutes, it is actually taking 30 minutes or more since the terminal is huge and people are finding it difficult to get around. Secondly, baggage transfer between international and domestic and vice versa is also taking longer than expected. These and many more issues need to be sorted out,'' said sources.