Venice was awesome, and unreal. Nothing prepared us for it, not Amitabh Bachchan serenading Zeenat Aman on a gondola in The Great Gambler, nor the series of Bonds, from From Russia with Love to Casino Royale with Moonraker in between.
Sure, we've all been on islands (Venice is built on 117 of them!) but nothing prepares you for waterways between buildings, most of which are centuries old, instead of roads, as a result of which they actually emerge out of the water - it's a bit like taking a tour of a flooded city by boat.
But this piece is not about Italian Ambassador Antonio Armellini's kind invitation to senior journalists/writers/academics for a seminar in Venice, the only seminar where the organisers gave equal space to seminar-ing and sightseeing.
This piece is about, sadly, the trip back from Venice, it's about how the abuse we habitually hurl at Indian airports and airlines is uncalled for, it's about how poor outsourcing can kill your reputation, and it's about German efficiency.
Our ordeal began when the first announcement the pilot on OS 528 to Vienna last week Sunday made after we'd fastened our seatbelts was to ask us to deplane! Since it was around 7 in the morning and we had a three-hour layover in Venice, there was no panic. All that we had to do was to take another flight to Venice. It wasn't as simple, however. Those staffing the Austrian Air desk (it's outsourced to a local firm, Save) were the rudest staffers I've ever seen, apart from being incompetent.
First, there was no information forthcoming on how we were to make it to our connecting flight. As time went on, as each of the 10 or 11 of us lost our cool (serially, fortunately!), one staffer got up and told us to do the ticketing ourselves if we felt she was incompetent!
While some of the group finally got re-routed, with available seats on other airlines rapidly drying up, the rest opted to stay back a day if that helped. We were told that would work, and bookings were made for us to fly from Vienna the next day (Monday) - there were 12 business class seats still available for Austrian's next day's Vienna-Delhi flight, we were told.
We were given boarding passes for the next Vienna flight (scheduled to leave at 11.30 am); no boarding passes were given for the Vienna-Delhi flight - we were told to contact Austrian ground staff in Vienna. Ditto for the hotel vouchers for our overnight stay. Food coupons? Forget it. No one wanted to talk to us, being business class passengers hardly mattered.
At 11.15, however, the gates were unmanned; they remained that way at 11.20... 11.25 ... 11.29 ... Meanwhile, another plane to Vienna was scheduled to take off from another gate. A mad rush ensued; another rude lady manning the counter refused to listen to us, to either let us on her plane or to tell us when our plane would take off. It wasn't racism though, some Europeans on our flight suffered the same fate!
Exhausted by now from running from one counter to another, and going through security (four times eventually!), with no one willing to give us the time of day, we decided to go to the business lounge - surely someone there would listen. Someone did. The lady there made a call and told us to report to one of the counters - apparently, we'd been deplaned!
We'd already ruined our friendly press attache Giovanna Mirelli's Sunday by calling her incessantly at every step of our ordeal, and didn't think much of calling her again - poor lady had been trying, since morning, to locate senior Austrian Air officials, but without much success as most of them took their holiday seriously and had their phones off.
Giovanna finally located an Austrian Air deputy manager, got us transferred to Lufthansa, after which things moved smoothly - that's when we discovered, for instance, that it's just as well we didn't get to Vienna since the plane we'd been promised seats on to Delhi was actually over-booked! Soon enough, we were booked to Frankfurt, and bookings promised from Frankfurt to Delhi the next day. The hotel bookings? I have no idea, our lady at the counter told us, she'd just been told to book us to Frankfurt and onwards to Delhi! What about the Austrian Air check-in counter? That had closed!
Another trek to the counter of the agency (Save, I think it was called) handling Austrian Air's Venice operations - the lady wasn't sure, but advised us to contact Austrian Air at Frankfurt. Once we were in Lufthansa's hands, however, none of this was required. At Frankfurt, Lufthansa's ticketing desk gave us our boarding passes for the next day's flight, hotel vouchers, everything.
Though India makes a fortune out of outsourcing, it makes you wonder about the wisdom of outsourcing if it ruins your reputation (of course, it also speaks volumes about the training Austria insists its outsourcing firms have). It also makes you wonder how justified the abuse we routinely hurl at Air India and Indian airports is. My apologies, Mr Thulasidas.
