Sylvia's Journal

I had been telling Axel stories about travelling through Delhi airport, on transit from Nepal some four years ago and what an arcane and tedious process it had been; how the functionaries at the airport had no sense of ‘customer service,’ and instantly made travelers angry. This anger then triggered their anger and with the functionaries angry you were really in trouble.

Now, with the new airport, I assumed all would be smooth and computerized, but I was wrong. The environment was modern and new but the business processes had not been adjusted.

But the first hassle started long before we arrived in Delhi. The station manager of Air India in Kabul (a punishment post for Indians?) would not let us take our roll-ons onto the plane – a safety measure we had taken because luggage on Air India tend to get lost according to a notice given to US Embassy personnel.

As I was trying to argue with the station manager I remembered my colleague Doug’s exhortation never to argue with Indian government employees because it would spoil India. And so I relented and we each got a sketchy tag with our KLM flight number handwritten on it in exchange for our bags that we may never see again. We crossed our fingers.

At the end of the jetway at Delhi airport all the transit passengers were told to step aside; once the plane had emptied we all walked in single file behind two officials. I had expected that the transit process would no longer require that our names be written in longhand on folio sheets with carbon paper, like in the old airport but I was wrong.

It was a confusing process with officials doing the carbon routine amidst a jumble of passports and e-ticket printouts. It was good I paid attention because some other traveler, who was not paying attention, had walked away with our tickets. And here, especially here, if you don’t have your piece of paper with you, you are a nobody and should not be at the airport. No one will help you.

After the papers were filled in (in duplo) we were herded into a waiting area, just like four years ago and asked to wait until some official came looking for you. The waiting area has no shops, no banks, no restaurants, not place to buy phone cards. Now I wished I owned a Blackberry, a wish I have never ever had before.

Earlier than expected an official with our folio sheets found us and took us to a young man with a KLM lanyard around his neck. He informed us that our seats were gone and we had been booked on Lufthansa that wouldn’t leave until 3 AM. The KLM plane had been overbooked and the airline had, supposedly, sent us an email to that effect (when? We wondered – not true, we discovered later after we had established connectivity). Ah, if only we had checked in from our computers at home.

I tried to use the broken record technique (we have confirmed seats, look! Take us to your supervisor – on endless repetition) in a futile attempt to reclaim our seats. Not being able to get past the peon I tried to call the Delta elite desk (I have traveled 1.5 million miles on Delta), an 800 number in the US that quickly used up all the credit of my Dutch Vodaphone account. I got disconnected just when I got through to a real person.

I tried to get to a person one hierarchy rung above the polite young man with the lanyard but the lanyard boy was well trained and politely explained that it was no use talking to his supervisor as he had already tried and his supervisor was actually angry. There it was again, this strange phenomenon I remember from the former Soviet Union and France, where the customer is easily intimidated by angry officialdom.

A plot to check in and reclaim our seats using the backdoor of the internet also failed because the wireless service required payment that could only be done via an Indian cell phone number; but how to get that within the confines of the transit space?

Finally, a nice official whose task was to pacify irate travelers showed up and mobilized all sorts of resources to help ease the collective pain of those of us stranded In Transit. He gave us his phone number so we could buy internet access, talk to Delta to find out how inevitable things were (they were, KLM had downgraded to a smaller plane), change our breakfast plans, our rental car pick up and such.

Having adjusted to our new reality (not leaving until 3 AM and not arriving until noon) we settled in for a long stay In Transit, drinking sweetened machine cappuccino, eating Cliff bars and chatting with other stranded passengers and local officials. Now that we had surrendered ourselves to the new timetable, heard from the nice Delta lady that we did have confirmed seats on the Lufthansa flight, we stopped being angry and were able to have more humane interactions with the locals.

With our itinerary totally out of order we did start to worry a bit more about our bags and whether we would ever see them again. I tried to think of the things inside it that I would mind losing very much.

And then suddenly some other young lanyard man showed up to tell us that there weren’t enough seats on the Lufthansa flight and he had found us seats after all on the KLM flight. He mumbled something about too many upsets at the desk and now things had calmed down. We will never quite know what led to what, maybe it was the nice Delta lady who reclaimed our seats? We also got a voucher for the business lounge. Within a matter of minutes we went from limbo in transit to luxury in lounge.

Surrender is a good thing. [Nine hours later the two suitcases did show up in Amsterdam, all contents as packed]