Review: |
Out of all 4 legs of my travel in and out of India, this definitely has to be the worst one, primarily due to terrible inflight service, as described in detail.
They kept on serving the same gassy food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, made up of potato, kidney beans or chick peas. Really???
The flight attendants made this flight experience terrible. Every single flight attendant in this flight was Chinese (or Korean or some oriental). I have obviously nothing against any specific ethnicity but they were simply clue less in all aspects of service and extremely slow. I don't know if they were doing this deliberately or they were simply dumb. I know that the flight attendants of various ethnicity work in a large airline but there is usually a mix of various types of flight attendants. How did they end up with ALL Chinese when I didn't see a single Chinese passenger in flight?
As I had to be awake most of the night to catch AMD-DOH flight, I was obviously feeling very sleepy and wanted the food ASAP after reaching the cruising altitude. However, they brought the food almost 1.5 hours after they started serving others. She gave me the excuse that I had ordered a special food and it takes time to heat it. Of course, I am not the first such person in Qatar airways and obviously not the only one in flight with AVML request. However, she was behaving as if I was alien from Mars or something. And of course, it does not take that long to heat one person's food, considering you have few hundred people in the same flight.
When I got the food finally, I was not given any spoon to eat rice and daal with. First, they should be trained to give that to begin with. If not, they should ask whether I need one. However, even after asking for one, she brought it to me after around 20 minutes, and by the time, I had of course finished eating. I asked whether I was going to get any bread with the meal. Of course, bread in AVML means chapati, roti, paratha, naan etc. However, she brought me one round and hard bread and when asked about it, she said that is what the bread means to her. When I asked for Indian bread, she said she does not know if catering provided one or not. In any case, she came with some paratha type bread around half an hour later AFTER she already picked up my plate and cleaned up the table. Seriously? Now what am I supposed to eat that with? She said she does not know how we eat that. I seriously believe that has to be deliberate. I can't imagine someone being so ignorant.
Later, some button got accidentally pressed and the massager in the chair stared automatically which I could not figure out initially how to switch it off. When I pressed the flight attendant button, someone showed up after 1.5 hours, yes, 1.5 hours to ask what I needed. Obviously, by then, I had somehow figured out how to switch it off.
In all this drama, I wasted at least 3 hours of sleep in the beginning of the flight that I could have had to take rest during the flight.
Finally, I went to sleep and had a good sleep as the seats themselves are excellent.
After I got up, a supervisor (Korean) of that flight attendant came to me as I had complained earlier to another supervisor who was economy class supervisor, because business class supervisor had gone to sleep and to take rest. She told me that their flight attendants are trained to serve food with fork and knife and they are simply following company policy. People need knife to cut meat (which I don't eat) and that is fine but at least get a spoon when asked for. She said that they are just following company procedure, which apparently seems to ignore passenger preference. When asked about the repeated gassy food, she said that is what the catering provided and I understand that flight attendant can't do anything about it. When I asked why the flight attendant came 1.5 hours after I pressed the button, she said that they are very busy. How busy and understaffed can they possibly be that they can't attend business class passenger for that long, for something that requires prompt attention? Basically, she was clueless too and she asked me to write the feedback on Qatar airways web site.
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