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While travelling with Indigo airlines from Doha to Delhi I noticed the level of stress which is affecting people from every industry.
Off late airline industry is quite in news for the lack of patience and increased level of stress which can be felt right from the time we enter a particular airport.
Indigo experience was interesting from the training point of view.
It started on a good note with smlies and greetings flowing freely. I did show my appreciation too.
I must have hardly settled down in my seat with my child when I heard an ongoing discussion between a passenger and crew member, it seemed to me that the passenger was going against the protocol by roaming around in the crew area and taking pictures despite the air hostess politely explaining it to the passenger.May be an attempt to put it on a social media! She seemed to take charge of the situation by reminding the passenger that it was a punishable offence.
Simple incident of not keeping change ready while buying the refreshments. I literally offered whatever changes I had in riyals to the air hostess to make her life simple and she was taken by surprise which motivated few more passengers to pitch in.
The flight was full of passengers mostly workers from Muscat, Oman and Doha.
Few things worth noticing were:
1. How crew members had to literally struggle to explain the basic security measures to the passengers from switching off phone while take off, putting on seat belt. There was a moment when the air hostess was depicting security procedures, the backdrop announcements were missing and the air hostess was trying to fill this gap by literally explaining on top of her voice. To everyone’s respite soon it was accompanied by the public address and the hostess could just demonstrate.
2. The toilet hygiene was in no way comparable to the international flight like Qatar airways. This made me ponder the importance of competetion mapping esp in Doha airport where most of the flights are owned and managed by QA.
3. How passengers treated the air hostesses with disrespect. One incident was when the air hostess asked one of the male passenger to shuffle his luggage as it was hindering the over-head cabinet closure, the passenger asked the hostess to shift it somewhere else rather than taking accountability for his own luggage.The air hostess curt reply as to how this was not part of her duty. This surprised me and forced me to think from both the perspective- from passenger as well as the air hostess point of view.
Aren’t we forgetting our culture of showing respect to the lady even though the lady may be doing her job and why etiquette is totally missing from our society just because we are paying for the services and vice versa.
I have witnessed the air hostesses in Qatar airways handling such situations in an amazing manner and with a smile and will not even bother to ask the guest to shift the stuff or talking about her job responsibilities. Is that because we take our nationality for granted instead of showing more respect.
In simple terms what I noticed that passengers were lacking patience as the flight was delayed by almost 2 and half hours and I am not sure if the air hostess were also doing extra shifts as they definitely seemed hard pressed.
Is it stress, compromising with training, cost-cutting or not hiring employees with the service attitude? These questions cannot be answered 100 % correctly as these are all subjective.
End of the day we all have to remember being humane whether it is the air hostess whose KRA depends on her service attitude or the passengers who are paying for the services. We also need to remember that we can’t buy respect. It has to be reciprocated mutually.
My overall flight experience was really nice as it can be seen from the picture too but being a trainer I can’t help pondering about these incidents and trying to search deeper meanings!