Air Deccan woes - a low cost model?!!

I was travelling from B'lore to Chennai yesterday after a really long time (15 yrs!) to attend a couple of weddings. I was very eager to see the new look of the city and it was time to testify all that I had heard about it. Becoz of the low ticket prices, we booked air deccan and still thought we could make it to the reception that evening, coz the flight was in the noon. Well, I guess it was a lot to expect from this supposed-to-be-low-cost airline in India. To our horror, we see that the 14.25hrs flight was delayed and now supposed to leave at 17.40hrs. After cursing and swearing to our heart's content, which didnt make any difference to the deccan staff there, we decide to hang-out nearby and get back to the airport at 16.15hrs. We are told that the flight is "on time", so we check-in and wait to board. The time is 17.20hrs. The waiting saga continues....

Each one of us taking turns to make trips to the information counter, we were told that the boarding would start in 5 mins, each time!! @17.55hrs.. I go and start yelling my guts out and I get this as a reply - "Mam, we are still waiting for the plane to arrive, we will take off as soon as it comes" (!!!!) So what the @%&^# were they saying all this while?! Anyways, I guess by then even they were tired of answering to passengers, so they let us go to board the bus. It was 18.15hrs and there was no sign of any bus there. By now we had just given up on being able to show up at the reception. Frustrated passengers hound the ground staff and start abusing them. Some were even ready to take off their slippers to hit them!! We three, as observers noticed that not even a single abuse made "any difference" to these guys. I think rather than these guys being trained for CRM (Customer Relationship Mgmt), they are trained to be thick-skinned so that they can take abuses of any degree!! It was even more irritating to see them stand like statues when they were being questioned. Anyways, the bus leaves at 18.20hrs and after taking us all around the airport, we see 3 deccan flights parked wing-to-wing in some crappy-inaccessible-corner that I had never seen before! We board the flight at 18.35hrs with a relief that it wasnt cancelled at least (those tickets are f***** non-refundable). The waiting still continues in the flight.. and it FINALLY takes off at 19.00hrs!!!!

When we used to talk about the low-cost airline models in our MBA classes and any of us would say that their cheap marketing campaigns are one of the favorable factors, the Prof would say, use "less expensive" or "low cost" instead of cheap... its not the right word. But I guess "cheap" is the most suitable word for Air Deccan... its true in every sense of it! It is supposed to be the Southwest airline model for India... but does low-cost mean no-hospitality, no-manners and service levels on the negative scale?? How can being low-cost translate to compromise on the service levels? Are they going to pay less to their staff 'coz they need not be courteous to the passengers anymore?! I don't understand how this fits in the model in anyway! Having no-frills with no free food, water and other stuff to cut costs definitely makes sense... but horrible-service makes zero sense to me! If they are trying to imitate the Southwest model, why not adopt the entire model completely, rather than taking some aspects of it and screw up the most important parts... like service quality (obviously we are not expecting something like Kingfisher or Jet airways... but the basic courtesy is all that is wanted). There is absolutely no value for our precious TIME. Even though you end up saving significantly on the ticket price, we realized that the opportunity cost of flying with them is more!

The worst part is... every other person who experiences this, talks about it but nothing can be done to change this....... coz people crib and still continue to fly air deccan, becoz of low cost. Anyways, we could finally make it for the dinner at the reception... straight from the airport.....Phew! I wish I can sue them and get refund of my tickets! Hmmmm....... High hopes!