Almost died!

Have u ever had this experience of very narrowly escaping death??? I had it on 4th June 2010 with the grace of the captain in Singapore airlines from Singapore to Bangalore. It was a huge aircraft with lots of people in it. The takeoff at Singapore was pretty smooth. I was enjoying the ride while watching their latest collection of movies - Karthik calling Karthik and Alice in the wonderland., till the captain announced that we would be landing in the next 20 mins and asked the cabin crew to prepare for the landing, which included snatching away all our headphones.

While the total attention was on the flight and its landing, there was a free fall of the flight for a few seconds(I guess a few seconds.. dont even remember how long it was for). The people in the flight started shouting in their native languages. I heard someone shouting in telugu - 'Ayyo.. Padipothundhi flight. awww... ', which means 'Oops.. the flight lost it balance and is falling down.. awww...'. Then the balance was maintained and before even people could come out of the shock, there was another free fall within a few secconds.. This time, I also shouted. My heart was almost in my hand. I dont even know what was the pulse rate. It was beating very rapidly. I just dint know what to do? I am going to die miserably with a free fall from atleast a thousand metres. How do I react? I was looking for someone from the cabin crew. None of them were around. Was wondering if I should pull out my life jacket from under the seat and jump out of the emergency door. My mind was blank. All I could utter was - 'Om Namo Narayanaya'. The flight had so many people - it had kids, young people like me and old people. If I got so scared, I dont have to tell you about the rest of the categories.

With all this havoc, the pilot continued the flight without even bothering to announce whether we will all land in single pieces on this mother Earth, still in a position to breathe its air... or if we are in danger. He dint give a damn about all the chaos and fear of the crowd. If you are flying 5 mins behind the schedule, that makes an announcement. If you are taking off 2 mins late due to a lot of aircrafts waiting for take off before you, that becomes another announcement. If there is turbulence in the atm, there will be yet another disturbance when you are watching a movie due to their announcement. When such things which really wont make a difference or which wont mean much are being announced, its really strange that people are left to die with fear and no one made a mention of such a situation.. If this is the case with Singapore airlines, dont even ask me about the rest of the airlines.

Now, I still dont know whether he was practising for some aircraft games on the sky with all of us in it, or whether it was really unavoidable and he had to take a free fall twice due to whatever conditions. The landing was too bad. It was so rash. But we were all glad that we had indeed landed with all parts intact. With the increasing number of planes and the airlines, is the quality proportionately decreasing? With the flight accidents and misfortunes going up rapidly, are enough measures being taken to prevent them or are the lessons just limited as grass for the media to feed on and people to talk about for a few days???

Red bus: Epitome of pathetic customer service!

With deep regrets I write this blog today.. for the simple fact that Red bus was a start up by BITSians. As a BITSian, its quite natural to be a bit partial to your own college.. I had a very bad customer service from them, this not being the first one, but the one that made me reach the yield point/breaking point. Below is the mail that I had sent to their customer service.. I honestly dont know if this means anything to them.. or if they even care about this. But, I want it give it my best shot to let them know that they were bad and they do need improvement. If they already knew it and decided not to bother about it, well, God save them.. because they will be left with no more customers on one fine day. Its high time they realize the fact - ' If you dont take care of the customers, someone else will'

To whoever it may concern,

I know that red bus has been started by BITSians. As a BITSian, I expect atleast some standards to be maintained. The customer service is worst than poor.

I last called the redbus in Bangalore to get 3 tickets booked(1 for forward journey and 2 for return). Inspite of repeatedly confirming the return date, I received a message on my mobile mentioning the confirmation of the ticket for a wrong date. I had to call back again and wait endlessly for someone to answer my call for something which is the fault of the red bus service person, who ever booked the ticket. Its a shear time waste to me. Instead of going into the website of the private bus company, say kesinesi directly and booking the ticket, the only reason why I go through red bus is to save some time in entering all the details over their website. However, my purpose is not solved and my time was even wasted.

After booking the ticket, I told very specifically that I need the ticket delived on the same day, because I was flying to Indonesia the next day, which is a sunday and is holiday for red bus. I had booked my tickets on a saturday morning and given a whole lead time of 1 day. I dint get the tickets delivered. I was promised that the soft copy of the tickets will be delivered after the hard copy is handed over. I organized one of my friends to pay the money and collect the tickets. I dint receive any soft copy of the tickets. My friend again called up and requested them to send across my tickets to my email ID. They still dint! I dont understand what kind of a customer service this is? If you cannot deliver, please admit in advance so that I will look for alternatives.

I really don’t know if this email means anything to you guys.. But I just want to let u know that u lost your good will… Definitely, I will never book with red bus again after all this inconvenience caused not only to me, but my friend at India who has been following up for me and wasting his time. I will communicate this experience with all my friends in the corporate world and make sure that they dont face similar experience by choosing red bus.. and waste their valuable time..