Airplanes don't have windows...

Airplanes don't have windows that can be opened. This deep realisation came about on a late-nighter from Chennai toBangalore on Air Deccan. About 50 of us houseful on (ATR) propeller-driven aircraft were feeling like being inside a sky-sauna. It was a perfect picture except that we had not asked for it and we did not like it.

Escape from Chennai-heat was ephemeral as I relised when I dashed into the plane. For the uninitiated, there is free seating on Air Deccan. And I was beginning to pride myself at the unapparent agility I had displayed to get myself a seat-near-emergency-exit-with-more-leg-room; for the second time in two days. 'Outside is better' is rarely something a person from Bangalore says about Chennai weather. But even before people had begun to settle down in their seats of choice or of compromise as the case may be, I could hear several voices hollering the hapless stewardess. 'AC costs money, man!' I heard from a far corner.

Let's call her just 'S'. It was written all over her face that S had had a long day, and I don't mean just the multiple hops her plane had made since her day had begun. A hint of grit that she had done this before and could take one more of this was evident in the confidence with which she told us that the AC was not working efficiently 'today'; and that things may get better when we would be airborne. She had come by our seats to brief us about the special instructions we needed to know as the people guarding emergency exits. It was then that we had not-so-subtly hinted that we were uncomfortable in the heat.

One hour is all I need to get through with- I was telling myself when the reading lights went out! Anticipating panic, 'S' made a quick and rather brave announcement that the lights would come back when the 'jets were started' (I was too uncomfortable to corroborate the relevance of jet to a propeller plane). But my thoughts were drowned in the roar of the propeller, which told me I was closer to Bangalore by 1 more minute. I was already imagining that it would be cool in Bangalore at 11:15 PM when we would disembark from the hottest thing on earth or hovering over it.

I was also looking forward to the refreshments that I could buy onboard. 'Simplifly' air mag says that the on-board refreshments business is an alternative profit stream for AD . I am OK with the markups on water and juice they sell. But as luck would have it 'S' started from the far end. (Damn Murphy's laws!). She was also interrupted by a gentleman who had to visit the loo. 'S' had to backtrack the cart to let the gentleman through. She started again and then had to backtrack again after he returned. My deep interest in this charade was driven by the fact that I was growing thirstier by the minute; my discomfort validated by a white gentleman who had bravely kept his jacket on until now and who had decided on giving up. Obviously, a lot of people needed refreshments and it only made my wait more agonising. In the middle of all this, the evil side of mind pondered on whether this entire 'NO AC' situation was a conspiracy to sell refreshments. No, too long a shot, forget it!-I silenced the dark angel.

Again, what do they say about great expectations? I was to find out soon when S handed me a bottle of Chota Bisleri and a tetra pack of 'B Natural Guava juice'. 'Can I please have something cold?' I asked 'S'. She said she had a Pepsi can. It was a little cooler alright, but I did not want to dehydrate myself any further with a soda, so I chose to be natural. Practising to drink without breaks helps, you would have realised, had you seen the rapidity with which I gulped down the 330 ml of water, followed by another 200ml of guava. That certainly helped. Refreshments also seemed to have had a general good effect on the crowd and specifically shut up a specially grumpy gentleman who had started to work on his sandwich.

It was then I began to think about the whole lot of work AD has to do to salvage its reputation. They have a rather beaten up status on the timeliness dimension. A cover story on Business World this month was elaborated on the challenges AD faces as a low cost airline. Despite everything, they currently have a PI of 95% on-time 'within 15minutes' and 88% on-time 'within 1 hour' of planned ETD. My experience with ETD of AD would probably be commensurate with the former and I have no complaints.

But can you imagine a plane with no AC? It is just a sausage of vacuum-sealed metal in the sky boiling on the inside (And that's no exaggeration!). When someone later sarcastically repeated AD's new punch line 'Have you flown with Air Deccan recently? It's WOW!' (it is also written on the uniform of AD staff) I was thinking about the cheekiness of their other tagline 'No one can, like Air Deccan!' Notice the comma in that tagline? If they don't act soon, they may have to drop the comma!