The story goes like this. I fly to Singapore often. Almost every month for work reasons. I always fly Singapore Airlines. Their service and professionalism is one of the best ive seen in times from any company or service provider. Luck sometimes does not favor you. Its one of those times when a sudden Singapore travel was scheduled i did not get tickets on Singapore Airlines in the last minute and good old Air India came to the rescue. Thanks to recession the 3000 rs. cheaper ticket compared to jet made Air India the default choice.

Never in my life have i seen such “i don’t give a flaming fuck” attitude in a service that it just beats the crap out of me. I’m writing this blog post barely 2 hours after i landed in chennai after my Air India flight. I don’t want the forget the spec of gems i was thrown at in the form of service so let me bring up as many star pointers before i forget them…

1. Chennai is the capital of Tamilnadu. Tamil is the Official Language of Tamilnadu & Chennai. Singapore has close to approx. 1/3rd tamil population, tamil is an official language there as well.

2. The crowd you are serving is all tamil crowd. Not one north indian passenger, not one white/black/asian/hispanic passenger.

Given this context what is the need for an out and out Hindi announcement on the PA system. The facial expressions of half the people in the flight was blank. They were oblivious to your communication as our politicians are oblivious to accusations and shame. Why can’t you use some common sense. Singapore Airlines is not even an indian company. The first thing they do when you get on their flight is a tamil announcement. All their menu cards are tamil too. Actually they’re written in Tamil/Malay/English.

I find it highly irritating when someone tries to coax a language down someone’s throat when its 100% irrelevant to a given context. I agree with the fact that Hindi is our national language and its a responsibility we should carry to know it. Personally i do but it is unfair to expect every tom, dick and harry to do so because you are dealing with india. A country where the number of official languages recognized for communication across states is 14. Its not like you really want to spread hindi an shit. You even switched OFF the safety announcement when the hindi version was playing, bravo!

I have many more wonderful pointers to discuss but all of it will make this post a long and boring one. I will follow this up with another exclusive “Air India” bashing post.

And yes, i will also add. All of the crew in the Air India flight spoke good galeej tamil but preferred to speak hindi and spoke tamil only when responded to in tamil or say a blank response. Seriously WTF?!

Amen..