NEW DELHI: Citing increased flight delays and passenger dissatisfaction at airports where ground handling is done by its erstwhile subsidiary that post-privatisation remains with the government — Air India Airport Services Ltd (AIASL), — AI has started looking at making alternate arrangement at those places.
The Maharaja on Wednesday (June 29) warned that it will discontinue or scale down work even to AIASL at the airports where the latter provides ground handling to AI.
“While we are working towards exponentially improving our customer experience, AIASL is unable to match the requisite pace of change and we continue to face several challenges at the airports managed by AlASL as ground handling services provider,” Rajesh Dogra, head of AI customer experience and ground handling has said in a letter to V D Dutt, the CMD of AI Asset Holding Ltd — that encompasses, among others, the subsidiaries of government-owned AI which are yet to be sold off.
The Tata Group carrier says it is facing “increased ground handling delays at (some) AIASL stations, discourteous behaviour with customers, baggage mishandling” and a sharp drop in on time performance of flight due to these factors.
At airports where ground handling is done by this agency, the airline says the percentage of flights delayed has increased from 3.7% last October to 6.1% this February and shot up to 11.9% in May, 2022.
Citing the increase in flights delayed, AI has told AIASL that the same are also resulting into consequent delays to next flights operated by same aircraft tail.
“The service lapses including manpower shortages extend to the terminal as well as ramp operations impacting the check-in / boarding, baggage handling processes almost on a daily basis. We are getting large number of escalations across all channels highlighting delays as well as lack of professional handling of customers at AlASL handled airports. We are unable to accept this situation any longer as inefficiencies in the AlASL operationsis severely impacting our services, goodwill, and brand image. In view of the above, we are constrained to explore alternative arrangements for ground handling services at such AIASL airports…. we will be forced to discontinue/scale down AlASL ground handling services at such airports,” it adds.
“Inspite of our sustained efforts towards constructive engagement and repeated highlighting of shortcomings/deficiencies in service delivery, (the same) deteriorate progressively…. for any airline to be able to deliver enhanced customer experience, ground handling operations such as check-in, boarding, baggage handling and ramp side activities are extremely critical,” the letter says.
