Leveraging Conflict!

It wasn’t a usual 6E232 Chennai-Bengaluru flight last night, 25^th November 2016. Indigo to a very large extent keeps their schedule departure time unaltered on all sectors. Perhaps, it is a form of training that is imparted to all new joinees, that they are pretty-much committed to ‘On Time’ departure and arrival and do whatever it takes! So much so, that they take pride during the departure announcement as, “Indigo Departure Time”…sole reason probably for their runaway success!

Last night however, while waiting at Chennai airport, I noticed that the departure time mentioned in the closed circuit TV panels showed a 15 minute delay. There was no announcement of this change from 21:15 to 21:30 Hours, whereas, a 15 minute delay in departure of their flight to Kolkata must have been announced over the Public Address system at least 3 to 4 times, if not more. All passengers one-by-one started walking up to the ground force at the departure gate to ask for the status. Not having a plausible reason to offer as an excuse for the delay, I guess the ground personnel decided to move away from the desk to avoid questions. They did however return when there was 25 minutes left for the revised departure time. Having been allotted a seat in first row, I had to wait till all passengers had walked in, as boarding was taking place through the aerobridge.

As I entered the aircraft I noticed that the Chief Flight Attendant was visibly angry and was having a heated argument with ground personnel in charge of loading food and beverages. It may be interesting to note, that variety of food served to passengers who pre-order their choice of refreshments is demarcated, based on duration of the flight. Short haul flights like Chennai-Bengaluru, there really isn’t any time to ask each passenger and serve a meal of their choice. Only passengers who have ordered at the time of booking their tickets are served and even the snack choice is limited between two/three varieties of soft drinks and between cashew nuts or cookies. Taj Sats – the catering agency for Indigo at Chennai had goofed up on 25^th November 2016. They had loaded food that was meant for a long haul flight; this meant,  no nuts and cookies and to make matters worse the soft drinks and water loaded, were at room temperature in Chennai weather.

Couple of rows behind me, a frequent flyer, who made it known to all of us within his earshot that he flew 150 times each year was unhappy when a warm Nimbu Pani was offered to him. He asked for Aam Panna; normally Indigo offers this as an alternative on Chennai-Bengaluru sector under the brand ‘PaperBoat’. Having had a heated exchange with the ground personnel in-charge of loading food, the flight attendent’s patience just snapped. She rudely told the passenger that this was all she had in the aircraft today and the passenger had no choice but to accept the warm Nimbu Pani – almost a ‘take it or leave it’ kind…

Not wanting to be taken for granted, the passenger spoke in a firm voice about his preference. The attendant, now besides herself with rage, first on the Caterers, then on the Ground Personnel, Passenger asking for something that she was not in a position to offer was the proverbial last straw. She lost her cool and allowed emotions to take over and yelled at the passenger. In the same breadth, she went back to the ground personnel and accused them of goofing up the loading and finally said she would not allow the flight to take off if she did not get the variety meant for this short haul flight or deplane the rude passenger. It was as if she was leveraging on the conflict with a passenger to drive home the point with Ground personnel that they were sloppy in their execution. She even went to the extent of asking the ground personnel to convince the passenger by accepting their responsibility of the goof up. Sitting close to the front entrance, I was privy to these discussions. It was also clear that the ground personnel were least interested either in replenishing the stock or own up to their mistake and tender an apology to the passenger, the flight attendant was insisting on. Personally, I was quite in agreement with the way the flight attendant was fixing accountability and responsibility, but did we have the time to see who would blink first?

Unfortunately, the drama that was unfolding before us was having a silent toll on time. We had long crossed the ETD of 21:30 and it was getting to be 21:55. Few of us fellow passengers had to intervene with this flight attendant to calm her frayed nerves, wave the white flag and call for a truce to allow the plane to take the skies. Apparently, the ground personnel were waiting for such a window of opportunity to escape and it came to them on a platter. They quickly took a sign-off from the Captain and deplaned. Once the main doors were shut, locked and cross checked, our now infamous flight purser took control of the situation and was back in command doing whatever she needed to do, when in-charge! She did approach the passenger after we landed at Bengaluru, post a 20 minute circle over the Bengaluru skies, Queued at No 20 in the landing sequence and asked him to cooperate and explain the entire sequence of events to senior leadership team at Indigo. She promised him that she would seek justice from her organization on his behalf. While we may not get to know the final outcome, at least we should be happy that ‘quality of service’ will always be the discerning or deciding factor between companies that are good to companies that are great.

Come to think of ‘Conflicts’, most of them are like the one described above. The root cause is always far away from the stakeholders at loggerheads. A human mind is rather hard wired to jump to quick egoistic conclusions, a distressed me versus them, with “I” always assumed to be at the receiving end! In times of conflict, the world comes to a momentary halt, as the head begins its spin…and how we wish for the inverse!!