chola wrote:chetak wrote:
jet mostly did its own ground handling and they were pretty efficient at it too. Their engineering dept ran a nice tight ship.
ground handling is not the issue. Money is usually siphoned off in spares and aircraft lease charges as these are dollar denominated payments and the lessors are willing to let you skim the cream off the top just so as long as they get paid first. That is what happened in KFA along with thieving and corrupt upper to top management who ran riot pocketing everything in sight, gouging service providers and contractors.
chetak wrote:
an economy class meal can cost above 1100 -1300 Rs and a business/first class meal can easily cost more than three to five times that amount.
cabin crew eat crew meals but pilots always eat first class meals. Rember the air India jokers ordering whatever meals caught their fancy for their flight meals, even if it cost a bomb and the airline is bleeding out. They were ORDERED by their management to stop ordering fancy meals that took their fancy and to eat what is provided by the company.
We pay for such illiterate jokers to live the high life at the cost of the public exchequer.
Chetak Saar, this is why I look forward to your posts. You peel back just enough of the onion to give a whiff of the layers that most of us don't see.
AI has enough written about it that we expect some of excesses. The others less so and we are always surprised when they can't make a go at the fastest growing and third largest market in the world.
In your opinion, are the shenanigans as bad in the other corporations in the industry or companies like IndiGo and Spice really do run tighter ships?
Regarding shenanigans, we have seen one low cost airline, an alleged pioneer in this segment, sell needlessly high priced food/snacks on board their flights. Thieving crews used to open up, say, a pack of sandwiches, carefully split it into two, repack and sell each half of the original pack of sandwiches at the originally advertised price and pocket the difference which was the original price of the sandwich pack and so on it went. Some of their other tricks were too shady to recount on an open forum.
IndiGo and Spice really do run tighter ships. Their food/snacks are usually branded and some come in sealed tins, tamper proof packing so any evidence of tampering is immediately noticeable.
One time I used to fly air India quite extensively and have personally seen flight and cabin crew walk off the flight carrying away expensive bottles of wine and single malt booze. I am given to understand that this still continues to be an insidious practice. Business and first class liquor consumption are not restricted and under this guise, the accounting of food and booze becomes fuzzy, "enabling" employees to cart away lakhs worth of booze and food after every single international flight, especially during layovers as it helps them save their already considerable allowances and pig out at the cost of the Indian public on purloined khaana.
I have never seen this happening so brazenly on any other airline but that is not to say that those gora employees don't know how to beat their system.
The crew of one recently grounded airline is quite notorious for smuggling drugs on international routes and quite a few of them have been offered commodious and long term government accommodations with free board and lodging, including medical benefits at some of our better known and renowned public institutions which are now eagerly awaiting the arrival of celebrity guests like nirav modi and his family members, mallaya and probably some of his friends too.
Yes, there are supposed to be checks etc but how can one be a successful sarkari karamchari if they don't know the basics of how to beat the system and "enjoy" the perks??