MJ Akbar
IT is such a pity that Vistara is going to fold up just when they found the perfect napkin. On a recent flight from Delhi to Bengaluru, the serviette was paper-thin, viscous, disposable, rather than the heavy cotton offered earlier, more suited to the Victorian travel framework than the lithe, short-haul spirit of modern flights. The one asset it could not transfer from the old version was the eye in the corner which helped you attach the napkin to your shirt button, a very practical requirement of colonial antecedence if you wanted shirts without stains. For the airline the change must mean loads of savings in washing bills, so no Diwali gifts for Vistara management this year from the laundry contractor. As Vistara fades into Air India, an inevitable question: Will the bad destroy the good after the merger as it generally tends to do? Will Vistara’s excellent crew service sink to the current Air India’s pathetic levels?
Sense of entitlement
Air India, started by JRD Tata, was nationalised in 1953, and left in competent hands until the Government decided that the omnipotent bureaucrats in its service were as good at running an international airline as shuffling a file from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Welfare. The Tata family bought it back in January 2022 after this quality airline had been destroyed by political control but have not been able to salvage its reputation over nearly three years of effort.
Many of their flights, let’s face it, stink. Literally. The service has a different toxicity. It smells of a sense of entitlement, as if the staff are doing you a favour. Maybe they are all secret Marxists and resent your presence, particularly if you are in business class. One passenger on a recent visit to Singapore repented bitterly after the callous indifference of the crew. At least she kept her complaint private, although no one in our circle is going to fly Air India anytime soon. Newspapers carried a story, after it had gone viral on social media, of a first-class passenger who described the rubbish he was offered in lieu of food, the insolence that accompanied the victuals, and broken seats. Air India repaid the Rs 5 lakh-plus he had spent on the ticket. Did they take any action against the crew? Let me suggest an answer without checking. No.
Generally immaculate
Vistara was not complaint-free. Nothing is. But the service is generally immaculate, the crew friendly and motivated despite the terrible hours. (Don’t confuse flying with glamour; it is the most difficult of professions.) Vistara’s on-time record is almost as good as Indigo’s, which is the leader by far in the basic experience of getting you from Point A to Point B with the minimum of hassle. Rahul Bhatia, who owns Indigo, knows how to run an airline. He is also terribly lucky. He does not live in an age when commercial success generated envy in the political class. He is beyond the cold clutch of nationalisation.
Air India made the mistake of succeeding at a time when governments were pompous enough to believe that they were the only guardians of the public good. They are guardians but not the only ones. The damage done by their excess has caused a muchneeded deflation in the pomp and circumstance of the political class.
Serious security breach
Occasional doses of deflation may now be essential in the private sector. Very recent experience indicates serious indifference to security generated possibly through berserk computers, but that is not an alibi when it comes to a security breach. In a specific case, Vistara claimed that a particular passenger had been on a flight she had definitely not taken. An email pointing this out brought the timeless response of a stonewall establishment: hi hi ha ha hope you are in excellent but no, we never make mistakes.
When facts were reaffirmed in a subsequent email: silence. Silence on the real question; which is security. Who had travelled on that seat in the name of this passenger? If the Vistara computer had recorded the journey, someone had. I tried to ask. Lots more of silence.
