KISSA WHEELCHAIR ΚΑ

I HAVE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE with my left knee for a few months now. While I manage all my day-to-day activities at work and at home reasonably well, I have been requesting a wheelchair at the airport because of the long queues and sometimes long commutes to airport gates.

- Sandeep Goyal

The wheelchair has turned out to be my most valuable litmus on customer care by various airlines. Smiling air-hostesses, I have figured over the past few months, don’t make for good customer care: handling a customer with a disability, with respect and efficiency, is a much better test of goodness.

Before I tell you my Kissa Wheelchair Ka with airlines in India, let me begin by telling you about my trip to Australia a few months ago. Almost all through our Perth-Sydney-Canberra-Brisbane trip, we were flying Qantas. Due to acute shortage of staff all over Australia, Qantas staff would just point us to the wheelchair dump at every airport and my daughter would push the wheelchair for me to the boarding gate. I am sure they had some staff assigned to helping those who were unaccompanied and travelling alone, but because I had family travelling with me, the wheelchair became an additional familial responsibility. The airlines’ attitude was simply matter-of-fact and completely hands-off – just fend for yourself. It is good enough that we’ve provided you a wheelchair. Beyond that, please take care of yourself. My rating of Qantas: 2/10.

On our Mumbai-Singapore-Mumbai sectors, enroute Australia we were on Singapore Airlines and had to transit through Changi Airport. The SQ service was pretty efficient and the staff were there waiting at the plane gates, and they were on time to pick me up from the business lounge both ways. But on the return journey, the wheelchair attendant transferred me to a golf cart which dropped me near the security check but there was no help available to wheel me to the gate thereafter. My rating of Singapore Airlines: 5/10.