Saturday, April 30, 2011

Playing police

This story reminds me of an why I stopped flying with British Airways. Staff thinking like hall monitors and treating customers as potential offenders rather than being helpful.

I was at Dubai International Airport checking in for a British Airways flight to London. The check-in clerk took my passport and went quiet. He took an awful long time flipping through the pages. I offered to help him find the relevant page with the UK visa on it but he wouldn't even acknowledge my presence. I must say that since I had at least 3 older UK visas on that passport, I could understand if he was confused and I could have helped him find the right one, but he wasn't having any of that. By now, we'd squandered a fair amount of time, thankfully I had the good sense to reach the airport 3 hours ahead of my flight.

The check-in clerk continued to get more rude and obnoxious as this process of flipping through my passport went on. Finally the guy had the good sense to go talk to his supervisor, who was definitely in a higher IQ band. The supervisor asked me if I was going onwards from London to the USA, when I replied in the negative he pointed out that I had a valid visa for the USA and the clerk assumed that I was trying to go to the States without a ticket. To say that I was baffled would be an understatement!

Now I did have a few more valid visas at that point of time, why did he not think I was going to all those places too? To think we'd have saved so much time if he'd just thought to ask me that. I can tolerate a security official treating me suspiciously, but a client facing baggage handler! Now this is too much, any wonder I use different airlines now?

Sunday, April 24, 2011