69% passengers say Air India, Vistara face timeliness issues, 46% flag IndiGo for staff attitude: Survey

Tales of delayed flights, rude staff behaviour and baggage issues have become quite frequent in the past few months. Last month, major airlines such as IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India and Vistara as well as new players like Akasa Air had a chaotic run.

Passengers were stranded at various airports including Delhi, Lucknow, and Kozhikode among others, due to no prior information before cancellation of flights and a lack of timely updates apart from weather problem, technical glitches and unprofessional behaviour of airlines and airport staff.

Now, 69 per cent said that Tata Group-owned Air India and Vistara failed on the timeliness test, while 55 per cent of the passengers travelling with the airline said that there were issues with the maintenance of aircraft, according to a LocalCircles survey.

Around 38 per cent indicated problems with staff attitude and courteousness another 38 per cent said there were problems with baggage handling. Other 38 per cent said that there were issues with information timeliness and transparency in case of flight delays or cancellations.

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While 24 per cent had customer issues, the other 24 per cent surveyed said that the entertainment systems inside the aircraft were subpar. SpiceJet was not any better when compared to Air India and Vistara as 59 per cent said that timeliness was a big issue.

The second big issue with the airline was information timeliness and transparency (48 per cent) in case of flight delays or cancellations. The other pertinent issues with SpiceJet were baggage handling, quality and maintenance of aircraft, food quality, in-flight entertainment systems, customer services, as well as staff attitude and courteousness.

IndiGo, the market leader which trended on social media for passenger issues, also failed to impress passengers on the staff attitude and courteousness front. Around 46 per cent of the passengers surveyed reported issues with the airline staff's attitude and courteousness.

Other pressing issues that the passengers faced were timeliness, information timeliness and transparency, baggage handling, food quality, customer service, quality and maintainence of aircraft and in-flight entertainment systems. In case of Akasa Air, a whopping 75 per cent of the flyers surveyed flagged issues with customer service as not being up to the mark whereas 50 per cent said that timeliness was a big problem.

The survey of airlines received over 47,000 responses from airline fliers located in 302 districts of India. 66% respondents were men while 34% respondents were women. 46% respondents were from tier 1, 30% from tier 2 and 24% respondents were from tier 3 and 4 and rural districts.

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