Simplif%#&*$

Air Deccan. Ooooo.. the cheapest airline ever. Must be really something. Of course it is.
It's the most shitty airline company to have mushroomed. I'm anything but proud to have been part of the Air Deccan commuter group.

So a sweet narration of the turn of events for a rookie on Air Deccan -

Booking the ticket online wasn't a problem. Also, the fact that I had done so way before my scheduled flight meant it was confirmed immediately. Good. Things were going smooth (thus far). A Bangalore return ticket cost me Rs. 4700 (tax included). Not bad.. not bad at all.

A 19:25 departure from Mumbai told me to get to the airport by 18:00 hours. Play it safe. Then reality kicked in. Firstly, the waiting lounge is quite a mockery of itself. Scores of hapless travellers wandering aimlessly from section to section, looking for that vacant seat. Appalling infrastructure. Or maybe despicable planning. You choose.

Now if there's one thing about Air Deccan which makes no sense at all is how they opt to avoid assigning seats to confirmed passengers. I mean.. what is sooo tedious or complex about getting a computer with a database ready, backing it with an employee and entering seat preferences for customers ?? Like thats gonna be a major cost incurring factor. Bah.
This leads to a mad rush right from the terminal to the entry point of the plane. People want seats closest to the exit, some concentrate on window seats and the rest wouldnt care for the world. It's their first time by air. That I agree is a great opporuntity for those who'd love to fly but were bogged down by costs.

So we got onto the plane after observing an old man nearly falling on his face after being shoved off the bus ( all this for a lousy seat ) and the rest was ok. Flying time was estimated to be 1hour 30min on my ticket but we got there in an hour and 10. So that was good. Although the captain apologized 3 times for the delay, which was kinda irritating the inflight experience was ok. It is after all .. a "no frills" airline.
On reaching Bangalore, some idiot Deccan official at the airport directed us to the WRONG baggage conveyor belt. Luckily an Indian flight has just landed with us so as soon as we saw its bags hogging the belt, we realised something was amiss.

The return journey was worse. Check in counters were arranged in the corner of the hall so the lines developed into serpentine queues mingling with each other. And yes,. they didn't even have destination boards on the counters so people had to keep asking if they were standing in the correct line for Mumbai, Delhi, Trivandrum or Cochin. Shit. Then during the security check it was a common line for all airlines.. so the line was even longer. Then suddenly a new Deccan idiot came running and requested us to move to a counter 100m away to ensure faster processing. About 30 of us ran there and after 10min of waiting a guard comes along to inform us that the counter is never open for use. So we run back to the original line and by this time its 1.5 times longer than before. Ok, so now Deccan officials register the screw up and get panicky cuz the flights scheduled to leave soon. They call us out specifically making security check a complete joke, each person screened in 3 seconds or something. Haha.

And then.. when we enter the plane thinking its all over, we look above our heads to see the cabin swarming with mosquitoes. Big fat ones buzzing here and there...awwww great. Scurrying about were the crew and after 5 min they sprayed two full canisters of pesticide. So the air was completely plagued with crap for us to breathe in. Wonderful.

I dont know... this airline is really bad. It's cheap for a reason but there's a limit to some things.
I suggest they change their slogan to the headline I've posted - without the censor of course.

Please make amendments Captain Gopinath.

Simplifly just isn't Air Deccan.