Return Travel from India

I returned to the U.S. from my three week vacation in India on November 18th, with a flight around 2:30am on the 19th.

The trip to the airport in Mumbai was fine.

Once in the airport I checked in and dumped my bags with the airline for the trip, then paced up and down the nonsecure parts of the terminal looking for a quiet place to sit and fill in the immigration form.  There was a small lounge that was jam packed with people at the far, far end of the terminal from where I checked in.

Finishing that, I got in line for Immigration (which technically, should be Emigration, since it's for exiting India).  There were two lines, both of which stretched completely out of the Immigration hall's roped queues and freeform into the terminal.  While I was waiting, some guy tried to go through the First Class and Diplomatic line, which is shorter, telling the gov't security woman "I'm a platinum customer" and when she said nothing, and didn't open the rope he started yelling "PLATINUM, DO YOU KNOW WHAT PLAT -- I -- NUM MEANS?" and she still didn't let him through, so he got in the regular line.

Behind me in line was a young woman who whenever the line inched forward would walk ahead until she hit me, never just stopping a few inches behind me.  The line took about 40 minutes or so until my turn at an Immigration counter, where I had no troubles and didn't get any questions from the officer.

Through there the line formed for the security check.  There was a bottleneck in that two officers checked all the passengers' passports and boarding cards for the fresh Immigration stamp, then there were the roped queues going to the actual security checks.  The security check was like it always is in Mumbai, chaotic and confusing about where to go, which line to be in, and a longer time separated from my bag than at other airports.  It took another 20 or 30 minutes…

Once through I found a seat in a somewhat quiet lounge in the terminal to call Leena and talk for a bit...

After she and I got off the phone I just sort paced around the terminal.  There wasn't any food that seemed appealing at the time, so I was a little hungry, but didn't get anything.  I kept using the bathrooms, too, to empty myself out for the travel.

We started boarding at the time I sent Leena an SMS (which was quite a struggle because I forgot how the old Motorola RAZR worked…) to say I was on my way...

I got a window seat for the flight from Mumbai to London, so that was good…  I slept for around 4 continuous hours when they dimmed the lights, and then off and on later.  The whole flight was in night time, with the dawn some way behind us, but getting closer and closer throughout...

I got to my seat early in the boarding process because it was so far in the back.  That was when I opened my backpack to get out my sweatshirt that I noticed my new, $1,500 Canon 35mm f/1.4 lens was not there...

It wasn't until the plane was nearly full and few people were still getting on that my row-mates arrived…  They were an elderly Gujarati couple.  The wife took the aisle seat and the man took the middle one, immediately spreading his legs wide so he encroached on my space.  And smelled kind of bad…

Both of them coughed horribly throughout the whole flight, without covering their mouths or anything.  The woman looked like she was pretty sick most of the time.  She refused all food and spent a lot of the flight with her head against the seat in front of her.

When the meal came around, the flight attendant asked me if I wanted the egg or the idli & upma option, but asked them if they wanted veg or non-veg.  The man got veg, which I also got, since the non-veg one was scrambled eggs, which I don't like.

I take it the older couple are not seasoned, worldly travelers…  The man opened his meal and didn't recognize the idli, sambar or upma, all three of which originated in south India but are now common everywhere.  For each one of them he asked me, "what this?" and when I told him he asked, "is vegetarian?".

Near the end of the flight the flight attendants handed out suggestion and rating cards to some passengers to fill, about how the airline performed.  After I finished filling my rating card, the guy next to me handed me the couple's U.K. Immigration Landing Cards and their passports and sort of asked me to fill them out, because neither of them speaks or reads enough English for that…  So, I started with one, copying the details from the man's passport (that's how I know they were Gujarati…) onto the Landing Card.

I filled all of it except the details about their stay in the U.K. and when I asked, the guy said they were going to London.  But I'd noticed his Indian passport had been issued in San Francisco, so I guessed they have relatives in the U.S. and might be visiting there, so I asked "U.S.?" and he said "Los Angeles" and showed me his boarding pass for a flight from London to Los Angeles.

At that point, I couldn't ask in Hindi or English for him to understand whether or not they were spending any time in the U.K. that would require them to go through Immigration.  I rang for a flight attendant and when she showed up I explained the problem and she asked the guy in Hindi about their travel plans, finding that they weren't leaving Heathrow Airport, so they didn't need the cards at all…

The couple split up after we landed, the man getting off the plane while the woman stood in the aisle and indicated for me and others to go ahead of her.  Maybe she needed assistance getting off and was waiting for a wheelchair or something, I'm not sure.  She definitely didn't look well, so it's a possibility.

It was a long, long walk from the plane to the first sign for transfer passengers showing what terminal to go to for the next flight.  I stood around a little bit to see if I'd see them so I could tell them where to go, but they never showed up.  If she needed assistance then probably the airline person who helped would also get them to the right place.

It turned out to be a lot more walking to get to the bus between terminals, which I just barely got on before the doors closed and the bus left the terminal.  And then in that other terminal another security checkpoint for transfer passengers.  It was smaller, yet more confusing and chaotic than the regular security checkpoints for passengers entering the airport there at Heathrow.  But I got through okay, and into the terminal…

I didn't have all that long to wait until the gate opened for my flight to New York.  At the gate when I handed my boarding card and passport to the woman it gave her some kind of error, then it worked, but she still had some trouble.  She got another gate agent to help her with what to do, and he asked me to step aside while he did a bunch of things, running the boarding card through the scanner and my passport through it and a tremendous amount of typing on the computer before he finally handed it to me and said "it's okay" and waved me into the waiting lounge…  I don't know what that was about, maybe the barcode from the Mumbai airport's computer wasn't compatible or something like that…  Weird…

For this flight I had an aisle seat next to a window seat in the very last row of the plane.  The woman with the window seat was an extremely large woman who needed to get an extension for the seatbelt to go around her bulk.  I was already sitting there when she came back and saw her seat and apologized to me about my having to be crammed in next to someone of her size.  And she did encroach into my space a bit, simply because she was so big...

Otherwise, the flight was fine.  I didn't sleep at all on it, just read stuff on my iPad most of the time.  Virgin Atlantic heats their planes more than other airlines, so I was comfortable the whole flight in short sleeves.

Once at JFK the Immigration line was slow, with only two agents handling the line for U.S. citizens, but no problems there.  Baggage claim was okay, I got my bags fine, and then the line at Customs was chaotic, with a single desk and one agent on each side of it, but no defined queue for people to get into.  When I got to an agent he just looked at my forms and said "welcome home," and passed me through to the exit.

I had to wait in line for a taxi but got one to Brooklyn.  That was $34 so I gave him $40 and he helped me with my bags to the door and all that…

So, both Jet Airways and Virgin Atlantic were fine airlines to fly with.  There service on board both of them was good, the meals were, well, airline food, but not bad.  Virgin Atlantic's food service had several rounds of snacks, that were good stuff, including high tea…

Reply from Virgin Atlantic Customer Relations

After the fiasco at the end of October with getting to India, I wrote to Virgin Atlantic to complain about the confusing lack of customer service at JFK after the flight was canceled.

I got a reply from one of their customer service representatives today:

Dear Mr Rubin Thank you for your email regarding your recent experiences when your flight home from New York was delayed. 

This flight was delayed as a direct result of the inbound service being diverted to Bangor. This was due to excessive holding times at JFK airport caused by light snow, wind and low visibility. Due to on-going delays while the diverted aircraft was waiting for ground provisions, and clearance, the crew ran out of their legal operating hours and it was therefore necessary for the flight to be delayed in Bangor. 

I can make no attempt to justify the lack of communications with passengers and the poor service you experienced with us on this occasion - it was unacceptable.  However, I would like to assure you it was not intentional or the result of any lack of effort by our ground and operational teams, we were simply overwhelmed by the task in hand.  We are of course taking this matter up in the strongest possible terms internally, so should something similar occur in the future we will have better contingencies in place.  

Mr Rubin, I appreciate that this experience may not have given you a great desire to fly with us again, however we would very much love to welcome you back onboard in a bid to restore your faith in us.  

With Kind Regards, 
Lee Pope

Customer Relations Executive 

Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd, The Office (GSW),
Manor Royal, Crawley, RH10 9NU, UK 

http://www.virginatlantic.com

Well, that sounds like they're looking at what went wrong.  In my message to them I made sure to not complain about the flight being canceled because of the snow, that my complaint was strictly about the problems in the airport after the flight was canceled.

In my complaint I suggested that more uniformed Virgin Atlantic staff to direct the crowd from the gate to the baggage claim to the ticketing area would've been nice.  And as the wait in line was several hours, uniformed Virgin Atlantic staff to at least periodically go along the line and reassure customers that they were in the right line, since that wasn't at all clear.  Nothing that seems huge or drastic, small things that would've made the process less confusing and stressful.

That last sentence, though, makes it sound like they should be offering me an incentive to fly with them again, "...in a bid to restore your faith in us."  I interpret that as there should be more coming, like a discount or an upgrade to upper class or something if I fly with them again.

Probably not, though...

The Old Man in the Garage

A poor, old man sleeping in the car port under our kitchen.

About a year before I left India to return to the U.S. some creepy old guy started living in our building's garage.  I didn't know much about him, but Leena said she thought he was a servant of one of our neighbors, although he never seemed to do any work, just sit or lay in bed, half dressed, and stare at us when we came and went in our car.

This week, while visiting Leena here, he actually waved and smiled at me as we were getting into the car, the first time he's acknowledged my presence.  So I commented about him to Leena and she said that over the last year, while I've been in the U.S. she's talked to him a little, and related some of his story to me.

He's an old, uneducated man.  He worked almost his whole adult life at low paying, menial jobs, but spent almost every rupee he ever earned to send his sons to school and college so they'd get educated and live better lives than him.

Only now that they're grown up, better educated and far wealthier than he ever was, they don't want anything to do with him because they think he's too far "beneath" them, and don't want to be associated with an uneducated laborer.  They don't want their acquaintances to know where they came from.

So, now he's too poor to have his own home.  Somehow he knows our neighbor who was kind enough to let him live in his parking spot under our building (and that's directly under Leena's and my kitchen).  He works as a night watchman at a bank ATM somewhere nearby.

In her conversations with him she's found out his favorite food is fish, so when she has some extra, or left over fish dishes she shares them with him.

Sounds like he's a nice enough guy, but life has dealt him a less than ideal hand...

Another view of our garage, with the old man at the back...

Made it to India...

Whew, that was tough, stressful travels...

I started to get worried about the trip on Saturday when it started snowing in New York City, and a few hours before I planned to call a cab to drive me to the airport, the snow started to stick!

At 2:30pm I called the cab company and was told it would be half an hour before they could get a driver to me, because of the weather.  I'm glad I called early...  The driver showed up about 2:50pm and it took around an hour to get to the airport.

Check-in with Virgin Atlantic was easy, a fairly short line.  My bags were about half a kg over the weight limit, but they didn't charge me for the excess.  The woman said the flight might be up to an hour late due to the snow.  Getting through security was a breeze and I was in the terminal with some time to kill...

After sending a quick email to Leena, I found a place at the quiet end of the terminal to get a nice, pepperoni pizza.  Once finished with that I walked the length of it again, and vaguely noticed that the display over my gate didn't show anything, not the flight, just the generic background.

I dashed over to the nearest large display of flights to see if maybe the gate changed, but alongside my flight it said "CANCELED".  Canceled?  Gulp!

I dashed back to the gate and as I arrived the agent announced on the PA system that due to the snow the flight was canceled, the plane we were supposed to be on was unable to land in New York and had been diverted to Maine.  I asked her about connecting flights and she said they'd have to be rebooked, and asked me to wait patiently while Virgin Atlantic sorted everything out as best they could.  She said we'd be provided with hotel accommodations and all that overnight.

The waiting around by the gate got more full and more full as people waited around for the next news about our flight and the arrangements.  No new announcements were forthcoming, just an occasional one about  being patient while the airline worked out the arrangements.  They said they'd supply refreshments, but they never showed up.

After a while they finally announced they were ready for us, and said to go to the "domestic loft" (no one understood that last word) to get our baggage, then go to the ticket counter to make new arrangements for the bus to the hotel and rebooking of flights.  As a group we all went en-masse away. Some of us went up to what we thought "loft" meant, which was the ticketing and check-in area, and the closest we saw to the stairs was Virgin America, which matched the term "domestic" but we found out that was the wrong place...

Back down to a baggage claim area...  Our suitcases were alongside a baggage carousel and people were taking them away.  I went through it over and over, but didn't see my bags.  There were no Virgin Atlantic uniformed staff for assistance.  A few other people looked equally puzzled and didn't find their bags either, and after going through the rows of bags over and over and over, the carousel started again and more bags came, with an airport working hauling them off as they came, to throw them on the floor.  No idea why they didn't just let them roll around the carousel, as it was harder work to get them from the floor when they were stacked in a huge pile...

I got whacked in the face once by a taller man with a backpack who wasn't paying attention to where he was swinging it.  But he was gone before I could say something snarky to him about being careful.

With my bags in tow, and not ready to spend the money on a trolley, I wheeled them to an elevator and waited in line for my turn to go up.  Once I got to the Virgin Atlantic check-in area there were no uniformed staff, again, to help with where to go.  It wasn't at all obvious.  I saw a few other people with tags on their bags and carry-ons that looked like they'd already checked in, so I figured that was the line to wait in, especially as it went to the small ticket counter...

I was behind a friendly, older British lady and we chit chatted during the two plus hour wait.  Her husband came and went, going between possible places trying to make sure they got served in one spot or another.  The husband turned out to be the guy with the backpack, but once in line like that they were friendly.  They were on their way back from an Atlantic cruise, and she said the storm affected that, too, with huge waves and lots of people getting seasick.

So, after around two hours or so I finally got my turn at the ticket desk.  Travis was the agent who helped me out.  He first said he couldn't get me to London that night to make my connection and I'd be delayed by a day.  But then he didn't give up too easily...  Using both telephones and the computer whe worked my case for around 20-25 minutes.  The other agent was rebooking passenger after passenger on the Kuwait Airways flight to London that left at 9:45pm, filling out some forms, stamping them and saying "take this to Row 6 over there and hand it to the agent and they'll check you in..."

Travis eventually said he could get me to London that night, but was still working on the London to Mumbai route for me.  He had some trouble getting hold of Jet Airways to cancel my current booking, as no one was answering their phones.  He got one of his supervisors to get him an unlisted number, and got through and I heard him telling the Jet person about canceling my booking as "he's not gonna make the flight."

Finally he had everything ready for me, around 8:45pm.  He had me booked on the Kuwait Airways flight to London and a British Airways flight form London to Mumbai, but with a 12 hour layover in London.  He explained that he wasn't able to get me checked in all the way, or my bags, so in London I'd have to collect my bags at the baggage claim and then check them in again at British Airways.  Then he gave me the form he stamped and sent me to Row 6...

I found the Kuwait Airways check-in desk and handed my form to the agent who then weighed my bags and put the tags on them and handed me my boarding pass.  She sent me to the baggage security area where there was a massive line, both for Kuwait Airways and some other airline.  There someone in a uniform stopped me and then stopped other Kuwait Airways passengers saying he'd have to halt the whole line and get us through in order to make our flight.  He coordinated with another person and blocked the line of other passengers and led us as a group to drop our bags.

The next security was easy enough, and I got to the gate before boarding actually started.

Once on the plane we stayed on the ground for an hour and a half before taking off...

I slept badly on the flight, with an aisle seat and a somewhat annoying, older fellow on my right who kept banging his legs and arms into me.

The Kuwait Airways flight was shorter than my original Virgin Atlantic flight for the same route.

We made it to London early in the morning.  At Immigration I just told the agent there that I was only transiting through and had to get my bags and go check-in for another flight and he didn't give me any trouble.

After getting my bags I had no clue where to go in Heathrow...  I found the service desk who said I needed Terminal 5, and said the bus was faster than the train, but he'd have to carry my bags up the stairs to it.  So, I opted for the train (let's face it, with a 12 hour layover, who's in a rush?).  Only I got on the wrong train, the one that went between Terminal 4 and Terminals 1, 2 & 3.  After twice I figured out that one didn't go to Terminal 5 at all and switched to the parallel one...

At Terminal 5 I took my bags up the elevator to the check-in area and got in a short line for assistance.  The guy there booked me onto my flight, asking what kind of seat I wanted, with window seats still available.  I asked about my bags and he said it was too early to check them in, they would only accept them 3 hours before the flight.  I said I was hoping to dump them off, and directed me downstairs to a private company that'll store bags, for a fee that he didn't know.  He said "check your bags there and take the Underground into London, don't take a black cab, they're too expensive, that's what I reommend, that's what I'd do if I had a full day layover like you."

After checking my bags into the storage, I got some cold drinks at the Marks & Spencer, then struggled to get hold of Leena to tell her about the change in plans.  None of the pay phones in the terminal would accept my American credit cards, without the chip & pin combo.  Eventually I turned on the roaming on my iPhone and sent a couple of emails.

Then I got an Underground ticket and took the Piccadilly Line into London.  I kept falling asleep on the train, though...  It took about to get to Piccadilly Circus.

I enjoyed a few hours down there.  Walking around Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Green Park and down to Charing Cross and Embankment.  I didn't want to go too far from the Piccadilly Line as I had a plane to catch...  I had a good time, took a bunch of pictures with my newest lens (which I haven't offloaded from the camera yet).  I had too much acid reflux to stop to eat, which now I regret, I should've gotten a hamburger at Ultimate Burger anyway...

Around 3:15 or so I made it back to the Underground and headed out to the airport again.  I was still a bit early, but I didn't want any delays to prevent me from making my flight.  I stood up all the way on this train and still kept dozing off between most stops...

I got to Heathrow half an hour before the earliest I could check my bags in, so I sat down and wrote in my diary for a bit.  By then I was developing a migraine, too, which was unpleasant...

At 5pm I got up to check my bags in, and stood in the long, slow line...  Again I didn't get charged for my overweight bags, so that was good.  Heathrow security was easier than JFK and I was into the terminal to wait for my flight.

I spent about an hour and a half just walking up and down, up and down, trying to find a drinking fountain, but no luck.  Once I bought a bottle of water, though, then I sat down at the quietest spot I could find to relax and sip it, only to see the water fountain there...

Then some more walking and I found another spot in a busier place to sit and write in my diary.  After I ran out of things to write I kept dozing off...  I'd start to dream a bit, then my eyes would close then I'd shake awake a few minutes later.  I did that for about an hour before getting up to keep walking more...

The British Airways flight was good.  It wasn't crowded, so I had a window seat and the seat next to me was empty.  A British lady had the aisle seat...  I slept most of the flight, with my head against the wall by the window.

Once in India a bunch of flights came in at once, so the line at Immigration was the longest I've ever seen it out of all my entries.  They had the rope barriers up but the crowd extended way beyond the entrance to that.  Once in, the line was moving fairly steadily, but it was still long...

The immigration agent asked me if this was my first trip to India, and I told him it wasn't (as though he didn't already know) but when he asked when my last one was, I had to think about it...  Because I was living in India, not just visiting, I thought of my previous trips as "out of India" and my entries as "visiting India."  But I figured it out as 2009.

My bags came quickly at the baggage claim, but the customs officer directed me to the x-ray, not directly out of the terminal.  The only problem I had at the x-ray machine was getting my bags, since a crowd developed around and I simply couldn't get through to get both bags off the machine.

And then out for my ride back to Pune.

So, here I am...  It's great to be with Leena again after a year, and nice to be back in our flat in Pune.  It felt like coming home.

And I'm quite wiped out...  I dozed off in the shower, and had a rip roaring headache.  I went to bed around 9:30pm or something and slept till 1:30pm.  When I woke up my headache was reduced quite a bit, but still slightly there...  It's easing off more and more...