Good Morning,Muscat!-2

Re-entering Muscat after a gap of a little over 100 days is a bit like home coming. The aircraft touches and taxis down the tarmac to halt near the arrival lounge. A Corbus picks you up for the short ride where one enters the quiet visa/immigration enclosure. Not like Dubai where there are over 50 odd counters on a spacious hall spread over precious real estate. Nor even like Bahrain which again is larger than Muscat, but comparatively smaller than Dubai. That’s the ‘big difference’ in terms of arrival lounge area!

Following the swine flu threat, there are non-invasive electronic spotters to check body temperature in many airports. Muscat is no exception. One walks up to the pre-booked visa counter to join the sparse crowd. A young Omani woman officer deftly handles the issuance before one proceeds to the immigration counter that is properly regulated by Omani men. Here again, the crowd is thin because there is just one flight landed with less than 50 passengers from Bahrain – which includes me as well.

In no time, one thanks the officials and exit. Usually, this is the time I switch on my mobile with Omani GSM card and invariably receive a call or notice a missed call from Yusuf, who used to pick me up from airport over the past 4 years almost every month. This time around, that exercise is not executed because I no longer work for the same outfit and secondly I had exited Oman three months ago and did not retain any Omani mobile number. Another routine is to pick up few goodies at the duty free shop. I did not this time because I have no Omani currency. For the first time over the past four years, I silently reach the baggage claim area without entering the Duty Free Shop. I regret later, for a variety of reasons!

After collecting my baggage and getting through x-ray scanner, I come in the arrival lounge where receivers anxiously hang around the foyer. Again sparsely crowded. I look around for a British female whom I never met, but told to look out for. Emily Mathews is the name and she is my colleague in the new outfit where I will join this time. I notice a foreigner in pink apparel and enquiries, “are you Emily?” and receive a negative response. Suddenly notice another familiar face and a Brit girl. We wave at each other. “Meet Emily,” he says. Well, we met by now.

A sleek four wheeler carts me into Muscat’s Wednesday evening traffic. The weather is fine. No sign of any unbearable heat associated with August. Familiar sites glide past on both sides: Zubair showrooms, the Grand Mosque, Centre Point etc. Visit the office in Al Khuwair and then move to the guest house in the same area.

Penthouse bed & breakfast arrangement. Dump my stuff and step into the balcony. The view is panoramic. Mountains on one side and sea on the other. It’s night and nothing is clearly visible except lights all around and traffic 10 stories below. Eyelids threaten to shut down due to physical exhaustion. I see off my hosts-turned-guests and crash out with a promise to the Filipino housekeeper Leena that I would prefer a hot glass of milk at 9 p.m. I look at the watch showing 7.43 p.m. Close to 75 minutes nap bargained for. Let me crash quickly. I switch off lights and hit the bed.

Don’t know what happened. Perhaps the central air conditioner is extra cool. I woke up and got out of bed. Picked up the mobile to check out time. The digital clock reads: 02.17 a.m. What happened to my 9 p.m. milk? Not served perhaps. Or Leena could not reach out at the appointed hour. I step into the balcony with my Sony handycam and begin clicking pictures. The first shot was that of Muscat Municipal Corporation garbage van dumping the contents of roadside stationary garbage boxes into its maw. After a few more shots, re-enter my room. Should I step out for a morning walk, I debate, but give up quickly. Switch off light and hit the bed again to get into the clutches of Dame Sleep. Ready to snooze again. Bye.

Good Morning, Muscat!-1

Honestly I had no intention to reach Muscat via Bahrain. Tell me, why should when one has the option to fly direct Delhi-Muscat? Nonethless, when family friend-cum-travel agent Joginder suggested I fly Gulf Air, my immediate reaction was: what, have they reopened the Delhi-Muscat direct route again? Because they use to fly that way until two years ago – that is before the Sultanate of Oman pulled out of Gulf Air, a big time joint venture in the middle east involving UAE, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. Oman was the last to delink from Gulf Air. And I was a frequent flier on that route those days. Nostalgic, no doubt.

Joginder’s ‘no’ disappointed me a bit. I had to transit at Bahrain for a quick connecting flight to Muscat, a 100 minute hop. Instead of less than three direct Delhi-Muscat passage, I opted for a longer journey and chance to touch Bahrain after three years and explore Gulf Air hospitality! Plus the added advantage of paying approximately RO 10 less than if I opt for direct Oman Air flight to Muscat.

But I did not anticipate what rolled out ultimately. As per original schedule, GF 131 Delhi-Bahrain aircraft arrived late by an hour and hence departure was delayed by that amount of time. By the time, it landed at Bahrain airport, expectedly the connecting flight had departed already. What next? I had to cool my heels at the half-empty airport terminal for five hours for the next Muscat flight. The fat lady near the Transfer counter- working for Gulf Air – was impolite to the core. Several passengers missed their connecting flight to various destinations. One Arabic lady had missed her connecting flight to Athens. Wearing traditional abaya and hijab, she reprimanded the Gulf Air bully in flawless English. “Why should we passengers suffer because of Gulf Air’s inefficiency?” she demanded to know. Answers were none.

I asked for a complaint book and was handed over a Customer Feedback form. Meanwhile, she gave me a boarding pass for 3 p.m. Gulf Air flight (GF 550) to Muscat. I looked at the watch. It read: 9.45 a.m. Ohmigod! Five hours to kill. “What am I supposed to do?” I demanded. “Go and get yourself a free lunch at the four floor restaurant,” the Gulf Air lady responded gruffly. “What lunch? I want to reach Muscat a.s.a.p.” Can’t help was the smileless response. I expected a smiling and conciliatory tone. Not that ‘you-are-my-enemy’ countenance and bad behaviour. So much for Customer Service in Bahrain – the home base of Gulf Air.

Wait. This is not the end. I wrote my complaint and wanted to meet the Gulf Air officials in the airport. There was none expect the ‘gruff’ lady and another bespectacled middle aged gentleman – he was silent, but attending to other irate passengers. If I want to meet someone in Gulf Air, I need to exit the airport. Look, the airlines had committed a mistake and I am being penalized by unfriendly Gulf Air staff.

How to kill time? I loitered in the airport departure lobby – sparsely littered with Haj pilgrimages awaiting their Saudi connecting flight. Duty Free Shops were almost empty. Even McD was. Mind you, there is never any shortage of flights. Many were taking off at regular intervals. It is obvious, there is less traffic, courtesy recession. Bought a novel by a Lebanese author translated into English, picked up a few magazines at the bookstall, a packet of assorted lozenses and a Sprite can.

Scouting for a quiet corner to engage myself in reading turned out to be an easy affair, because airport was half empty. In the past trips, I had invariably failed. This time, I was lucky. Also procured a satchel of roasted and salted groundnuts. They were large in size compared to the Indian ones. Thankfully, the book was engrossing from the very first sentence. After a while, I felt a chillness. It is August. Peak summer. Of course, the central air-conditioner is on. If there is crowd, it absorbs the chillness. But the sparsely populated airport terminal added to my discomfort. Can’t do a thing. So walked from one end to another to keep warm.

Around 1 p.m., felt pangs of hunger. How about the promised free lunch at Gulf Air’s expense? First I need to find the restaurant that would provide free eat. I walked up to one of the nearby Bahrain Airport Services staff who politely directed me to the ‘other end’. I ambled across and found a Gulf Air First/Business Class Lounge signage. I escalatored to the higher plane where I was greeted by another fat Gulf Air lady behind a counter. Rather I greeted her. She was equally glum like her female counterpart near the Transfer Desk Gulf Air counter. I enquired about my lunch after showing her boarding pass with some code enscribed indicating ‘free lunch’. “This is First/Business Class Lounge. Not a free lunch counter,” she responded. When asked for directions to the correct location of ‘free lunch”, she stood up to tell me, ‘ask the information counter’ somewhere in the down lobby and walked away. “Why you Gulf Air staffers are so rude?” I asked her before she left. She just ignored me.

After climbing down to the departure lobby, I approached the information counter. One of the three attending the counter, patiently listened to my query and then called out another Indian sub-staff and asked him to show me the directions. In the next two minutes I was sitting inside the Skybar restaurant after properly guided by the non-Gulf Air staffers. Thank you, guys! Poor customer service is the most unpardonable sin in the service sector. Gulf Air is still in the process of learning. Buck up, quickly. Customers are merciless. One bad experience, they will never ever come to do business with shoddy service provider.

I am not nitpicking. I had a pleasant experience at the Delhi Gulf Air counter. I had checked in and was walking towards immigration. A lady stopped me mid way and said, “Sir, we wish to upgrade you to Business Class”. I did not ask why because this is not my first experience of such upgrades. Instead of wasting a perishable empty passenger seat in Business Class, why not gain some goodwill from some frequent flier in that sector is the logic. I thanked and accepted the Business Class Boarding Pass. Not all Gulf Air employees are insensitive. The service was good on the Delhi-Bahrain sector. So was the food. Now I am waiting for some response to my complaint wherein I had given my Indian phone number and email id at the Gulf Air counter in Bahrain.