Reality Check In

I always have had poor experience while checking into any Lufthansa flight from the US. The girls (wo)manning the counter mostly have no clue to anything beyond lip-gloss and nail polish and turn to each other for advice on a matter as simple as printing a boarding pass. I always wondered why this has to be so complex. Is it just that their systems are archaic and the interface is in Cantonese or is it something more genuine? I cannot help a feeling of amazement (and pride) when I contrast that with some experiences I had recently in a trip to Mumbai.

I walk into the Bangalore terminal (the only other airport worse than Bangalore is the one at Patna) and a bloke from Jet Airways asks me to check in at the kiosk. “You’ll get an additional 250 miles for free, sir” was his carrot. He punched in my ticket details (India is labor surplus so there is a guy who does all this for you at the kiosk) and hallelujah, comes out my boarding pass. I just walk to a counter and add my bag and I am all set.

On my way back I was in a rather longish queue to check in. Up comes a person from Jet Airways and asks for my ticket. He has a handheld in which he ticks in my ticket details with a stylus and shows me the seats available. After the “I’ll take 10C please, thank you” he prints out the boarding pass from his handheld. I am pointed to a counter with much less crowd where I add my bag and I am done. This was an awesome experience and I just couldn’t help think of Lufthansa and feel proud of what we have achieved since private airlines came into play just eleven years back.

If anyone has qualms about privatization of airports (my communist brethren perhaps) they should just go to the Mumbai airport. It still is work-in-progress but whatever that has come up is mind blowing. I had always wondered why announcements in the terminal are so clear unlike the typical railway station like sound quality. I discovered that all acoustics in the terminal is done by Bose. I watched some cricket in a forty six inch LCD panel that had DTH service, heard my flight called and was headed home.

PS: The stewardess announced in-flight that “Captain Saurav is in command” while I read the newspapers screaming out “Rahul Dravid retained as skipper”. Life’s twists!