Shock, anger and frustration — these are stages that many a passenger has gone through when her baggage is damaged, is sent to a wrong destination or lands up with someone else. Incidentally, the number of mishandled pieces of baggage — those that are delayed, damaged or pilfered—has actually come down globally, or so says recently-released data.
While the number of air passengers has grown by about 5 per cent, mishandled baggage has actually dropped by 21 per cent, according to SITA, an IT provider for the air transport sector.
Baggage can be mishandled due to a variety of reasons including problems in transferring or loading, failing to load or even tagging errors, the report says.
“I have had passengers taking my baggage by mistake. Also, on many occasions, the baggage has been badly damaged,” K. Raman (name changed), a frequent flier based out of Chennai says.
Passengers often use coloured tags or paste their names and addresses on the baggage, he says.
“But I must admit that such incidents are not as frequent when compared to five years ago,” he adds.
They occur more often than not in the international flights or the transit ones, an official of Airports Authority of India (AAI) says. It may have come down not only because there is more awareness but also because airlines will have to shell out quite a bit as compensation to passengers.
“The compensation may be based on the weight of the baggage rather than the actual value of the goods,” he adds.
A question commuters in Chennai had once got used to was — “Evalo Thareenga?” (how much will you pay). The introduction of the meter in August last year had opened the possibility of this question and the bargaining that inevitably followed becoming a thing of the past. However, in recent times, bargaining over auto fares has become the norm again, complain commuters.
The relative relaxation in the attitude of transport officials and traffic police due to the elections is perhaps one reason for autorickshaw drivers demanding high fares again. After the government fixed the minimum fare as Rs. 25 for the first 1.8 kilometre and Rs. 12 for every additional kilometre, the transport department cracked down on autorickshaws plying without meters or not turning them on.
However, once election fever gripped Chennai, the heat subsided.
“Some autorickshaw drivers have started demanding exorbitant fares. The police too do not seem too keen to check,” says S. Gunaseelan, a resident of Choolai.
Some policemen however react if they see an autorickshaw driver bargaining with the customer. “This happened at Chintadripet. However, the policeman did not take any action against the driver,” says M. Keerthi, a resident of Mylapore.
Poor monitoring, increase in fuel prices and the delay in the government introducing GPS meters are among the reasons for the drivers reverting to haggling with passengers, say transport experts. “Slowly, autorickshaws without permits will also return. All this will make people feel that it was a gimmick prior to the election,” points out an expert.