The Hindu Business Line : Patience on the plane

IN India if your flight is delayed and you are forced to sit out the delay in the aircraft, what would be your first reaction? Chances are that you would not sit quietly and bear the discomfort. Instead, you would look for the number of the Minister for Civil Aviation or the head of the Airports Authority of India to complain about the delay, the poor infrastructure, and so on.

But not so in America where passengers appear to think nothing of waiting, strapped in their seats for hours for their flight to take-off. I saw this "patience" of the passengers on two occasions in the last six months when my connecting flights to the US and Canada got delayed for hours. The passengers sat strapped in their seats without a word of complaint.

Late last week a flight from Montreal to Chicago boarded about 15 minutes late. Then the aircraft taxied on to the runway for take-off. After taxing for quite a while, the aircraft stopped on the side of the runway and the captain announced, "Sorry folks but Chicago control has asked us to hold our position. The weather around Chicago is bad and they have advised that we delay our departure by one hour."

Two more similar announcements were made before the captain got the go ahead for the flight. We had waited for more than three hours in the aircraft for a flight less than two hours long. And all through the wait on the ground, the only words one heared from the passengers were, "Hi Hun. Guess where I am right now? Guess will be late," or passengers calling up their travel agents asking them to re-book on other flights so that they could make it for those all-important meetings.

Last December I had had to spend hours in an aircraft that waited on a Chicago runway while the airport staff used sprays to de-ice the aircraft. Again, there were no murmurs of impatience from the passengers who all took the long wait in their stride. The cabin crew tried to do their best to ease the waiting process.

In fact, people became so friendly with the cockpit crew that they sought passengers' advice not on good shopping places but also in locating the Delhi Haat, which we had suggested as a good one-stop shop for everything Indian on the map.

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