QOS : A Case for Air-India

Air-India is India's flagship carrier for destinations in India and abroad. It has been providing civilian transport and disaster relief for nearly 70 years. What started off initially as Tata Airlines, has now rooted itself, as a loss making Public Sector Unit (PSU), with a diproportionately large number of employees on its pay-roll to ever make profits.
Indians who have ever travelled abroad and who have ever travelled Air-India would talk about the uniqueness of Air-India as opposed to other airlines. What normally gets them talking, is how every one of them has been ill-treated by the cabin crew and dismiss it as a junk airliner running on onygen provided by the federal government. What is not unique is the innumerable number of complaints the passengers seem to encounter whenever they set foot on the airliner.
It takes a lot of guts to be the devil's advocate, I must admit. I also would ask you to not call my client (in this case Air-India) the devil. Lets just call it the alleged devil . Most of your charges will not stick by the end of my blog.
A lot of sympathy that is generated within me for the airline may be partially attributed to the fact that my fathe ever worked there. What you see as blatant partiality, I like to call insight. I have heard my father talk about his work, and the people he ever worked with and it tells me a lot about the charachter of the organization.
For anyone who has ever come down to India and went back, was asked this one question : "how would you, if you could, summarize India in a nutshell?". The reply is swift :"Are you crazy, there is no way you can summarize India in a page, or a book". There is a word though :"multi-dimensional". To me this little aside captures the essence of Air-India the bloated organization. Its a company trying to find its feet in the myriad of people manning it. To me, its the heart and soul of being an Indian, in a way. We find India, too, in a very similar way. There is little understanding of the effort to push India forward, but the effort does come from various quarters.
As I talk to people, and I recount their experiences which have almost always been in the negative, it just seems to be plain hyperbolic extensions of "He said, She said" and making that apply to their experiences. Self-deprecation is a wonderful thing, and it is very common among Indians. What is also common is to bring anything and everything, Indian, down with the person. I have heard absolutely ridiculous comments from people : " The cabin crew attendant refused to give me head phones and instead asked me to sleep and not disturb him ", to " they refused to serve me food without onions in them". Most of these people also harp on the wonderful services provided by British Airways and such in comparison. I have travelled by these airlines, and as a guy who speaks French as the only other International Language, I find it very alien in these airlines, have had problems aplenty with lost luggage and not too friendly people at the check in counters either. I ask these people how do they measure QOS on airliners; they can not reply. To people who find it difficult to even eke out the 1400$ for the return fare from the US, expecting amazing service, the Queen's banquet as cuisine and having the cabin crew be your personal slave, means QOS , I'm sorry you are grossly mistaken. If you do expect that kind of service bump yourself upto club class or First class. But please be reasonable.
For old-timer Indians, Air-India is a very comfortable environ to travel , since they do not have language barriers. There is a certain degree of compassion toward a fellow Indian you can only expect from another. That is something even a courteous German or a British cabin crew member may not be able to provide.