Why I will never travel with GOAIR again! I have loads of backlog with my writing due to weddings, travel, sickness and kids but I decided to leave all that for yet another day and save someone the pain of travelling with this airline again. Good deed or not, I had to do this.

A couple of months ago when I got to know another little cousin decided to tie the knot during the rains in Goa and wanted me to be there, I booked my round-trip by randomly selecting a not-so-expensive airline and chose an afternoon flight so we could set course right after lunch. Little did I know that I would have to pay, the saved costs, in kind. Not sure if such things have happened to many, or maybe it was my bad day, or perhaps the GOAIR department randomly selected one of its customers to torture, but I had already framed this article in my head before I left from the Bangalore airport.

DEPARTURE FROM BANGALORE: G8285 (16-06-2017)

1. DELAY: I selected the 15:35 flight so we could reach Goa by 17:00 and rest before visiting the wedding house and all the relatives. By 11:00, I was informed by the airline that the departure was rescheduled for 16:15. We could manage the 45 minute delay so we had an early lunch and rested until we left for the airport. While waiting in the queue, at 15:23, we were informed that the flight was rescheduled, yet again, for 17:15 due to issues beyond their control. Finally, the aeroplane started moving at 17:30 and I reached Goa around 18:30 as the pilot flew at some supersonic speed (instead of 1.5 hours we landed on the Goa runway in 1 hour). We reached home at 20:00. Exhausted with the six hour travel (home to home), my children were cranky and my mother was grumbling to an almost fainting me (remember that one of my two kids is a fidgety infant).
2. NO FAST-LANE: At the Bangalore airport, unlike the other airlines, there wasn’t any fast-lane for the infants or the elderly. So, I stood in the anaconda queue with people muttering and babies yelling, including mine, in my face. No infant can sit in the stroller in the same location for more than five minutes and mine did ten before he started bringing the roof down. Added to that, the latecomers of the Mumbai flight were given first preference while we were left to drown in our own grievances.
3. NO WEB-CHECK-IN: Just when I tried to web-check-in and it gave me a notification that I wasn’t allowed to as I was travelling with an infant, I remembered that this was the same airline I had booked last November to Bombay and swore not to book again. Me and my Goldfish memory.

DEPARTURE FROM GOA: G8286 (20-06-2017)

4. UNCOMFORTABLE SEATS: There was yet another 45 minutes delay which I spent taking my kids for walks around the Goa airport but when I sat in the aeroplane, I wondered if the tickets were cheaper than the other airlines because they had uncomfortable seats. I wasn’t sure if I was heavy and pushing the seat back or it was automatically moving back when one sat on it. After holding my baby for more than an hour, I weirdly got out through the two seats besides me because for some reason I couldn’t stand erect or probably the front and back seats were too close to each other. Nevertheless, I was really uneasy.
5. EAR-ACHE: Maybe this is not the airline’s fault but my ears haven’t ached like this for years and I do travel by air a lot. I read about this and our ears ache with the rapid changes in air pressure while take-off and landing but my ears were aching in mid-air. The aeroplane kept going higher and lower and my ears ached terribly. I used my hands for my infant and I was left with none to vacuum shut my own ears.
6. BROKEN STROLLER: This was like the cherry on the icing. I reached the door of the aeroplane where I had handed over the baby’s stroller and after a couple of minutes of waiting, with the baby still in my arms, they informed me that it had been sent to the baggage carousel. On asking them why, I was told that it was already sent with no reasoning as such. Already pissed off and tired of carrying my baby, I walked all the way to the baggage claim area and ran to the person standing near the belt to help me get my stroller. The kind person obliged and tried to help me open the stroller too but it was broken. I could feel the O+ cells heating up inside me. Needless to say, I walked until the cab with my baby still in my arms.

I was so infuriated that I did not notice the Complaints office, I was ready with the title of my next article and I asked my mother to remind me never to book on GOAIR again. I really do not want to end up paying less for an aching eardrum, broken stroller or broken back ever again.