King of good times: can you help us?

flying the bad times!

I remember the first time I flew Kingfisher on a Bangalore - Delhi flight. The appearance, attitude, service, they were a notch above most airlines I had flown so far. Then they launched the BOM-LHR, which was so fantastic. We said, yeah, look India has arrived in the flying business!

Where there was a chance, I flew only Kingfisher, recommended it to friends. Almost all of them thanked me for recommending them. I did the same thing to my partner as well. When she asked which flight to book, I suggested Kingfisher to Delhi en-route London. Who would have thought that decision would make our live so difficult?!

It's been 43 days since we lost our baggage, the customer service couldn't go down such levels that we had to reach out to the Chairman's office. Yes, we did get several calls, but other than repeating the same thing again and again that they don't know where the bag is and they will report back in 24 hours, we haven't heard anything.

On 27 May 2010, we booked a Berlin-London-Delhi return ticket for 17 July 2010 on Make My Trip. The Berlin-London leg was operated by British Midlands(BD846). My partner checked-in her luggage all the way to Delhi airport. She flew Kingfisher (IT021) from London to Delhi and on arrival realised that her baggage had gone missing. So we filed a Property Irregularity Report (PIP - DEL1810706 / Luggage tag LH106562) at the airport itself and the Kingfisher executives said that they will send the bag across to our next destination which was in Spiti Valley !! Knowing that is not going to happen considering the difficulty even for us to reach the remote part of India, we told them to handover the luggage to our friends in New Delhi.

The PIP report was acknowledged by an executive called Amit Soni / code - 6089 / mobile number +91.9650883131. He suggested that we also call up BMI, which we did. BMI said, the ground handling in Berlin is done by Lufthansa, so requested us to call them. We did that too and Lufthansa employees were quick enough to check if there were any un-claimed luggage in Berlin TXL. None! So they suggested that we should claim compensation from Kingfisher for the delay / lost and Kingfisher can in turn claim the same from Lufthansa.

Except for once, there wasn't a single call / email from Kingfisher to update us about the lost luggage. During our working holidays, we were most of the time calling them for details and irrespective of the reference number, every time we had to repeat the same story again and again much to our anguish.

Since nothing much was happening other than all the time we spend on phone talking to Kingfisher executives, we decided to write a senior officer in their Mumbai office who asked us to report everything as it happened in an email to him. He acknowledged the email over phone, and said he has ordered an enquiry for the lost baggage. He also added that the moment he has an update on the baggage, his office will call us back. Now on this 43rd day, we still haven't heard from anyone.

On 7th August, 2010, I happen to be on another domestic flight of Kingfisher where I wrote about the above incident in the feedback form they distributed. Surprisingly, that worked and I got a call from their customer care office asking me if I have received the baggage or not! Interesting. This was followed by an email from Krunal Suryawanshi - Guest Commitment King Fisher. So I spent next two days talking to these guys (have to admit that they were prompt in calling back, but with no news on the bag, but reminded that the responsibility stays with British Midland and we should call them!). They suggested to write to chairman@flykingfisher.com with the scanned copy of PIP report. We also kept a cc to guestcare@flykingfisher.com and the senior officer referred earlier in Mumbai office.

The attachment wouldn't go through and all emails bounced back. Later we sent emails with all the information on a separate email, for which we still haven't received any response. Last week, I complained on twitter @flykingfisher and today I got a direct message "Regret yr exp.If not yet resolved pl write with dtls incl PNR/Flt/dt of travel to guestcare@flykingfisher.com to enable addressal of concern"

How many more emails do they want me to write to the same email id that doesn't even care to respond? So I tweeted on the following handles.

@flykingfisher baggage lost 43 days ago. Still no news, no compensation. shame on you Kingfisher. Till I get my bag u will see my post here

@TheVijayMallya for last 43 days I have been trying to get a response from ur staff 4 the lost luggage. It's a shame we hv 2 reach u 4 help!

I don't know if this is going to help. But I have decided to write every single day to these two twitter-handles @flykingfisher and @TheVijayMallya.

Till we have news about the lost baggage and we get rightly compensated we will tweet. Let us see if that will wake them up! Any ideas to push this further? Thanks!