ABU DHABI // Indian community leaders have been told their complaints about a major airline reducing its baggage allowance will be considered by their homeland’s government.
The heads of five Indian social and cultural centres from across the UAE met civil aviation, cabinet and overseas Indian affairs ministers in an effort to get Air India Express to raise its baggage allowance back up to 30 kilograms per passenger, after reducing it to 20kg on Thursday.
The budget airline serves many of the UAE’s low-paid Indian workers, who are furious at the decision to reduce the baggage allowance and charge Dh50 a person for the 10kg difference.
The airline has said it would reduce this cost to Dh30 for 10kg but this is still likely to be unacceptable to the huge number of Indians who travel between the UAE and their home country daily.
Shibu Varghese, the general secretary of Abu Dhabi Malayalee Samajam cultural association, said: “We heard about it – whatever the charges, there is no justification.
“We want these charges to be scrapped totally and 30kg should be without any charge.”
If the airline goes ahead with imposing the charge, he said the Indian community would opt for alternative airlines.
The community representatives arrived in New Delhi on Friday, and raised their concerns with a number of ministers on Saturday.
India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation has promised to resolve the issue within one week.
Mr Varghese, who was among the delegates that met Indian officials and was the first to return to the UAE yesterday, said: “We submitted our complaint with the aviation ministry, which assured us they would resolve the matter.”
He added that the aviation minister, Ajith Singh, assured the representatives that their complaints would be considered favourably.
The community representatives, under the leadership of Indian Media Abu Dhabi (IMA), included the heads of the India Social and Cultural Centre, Abu Dhabi, Malayalee Samajam, Emirates India Fraternity Forum and the Indian International Cultural Centre.
The group also met the minister of state for civil aviation, K?C Venugopal, Air India’s joint managing director, Nasser Ali, the Union Cabinet Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, and other state ministers of Kerala.
According to IMA, the Indian defence minister, A?K Antony, assured the group that the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the National Advisory Council chairwoman, Sonia Gandhi, would be informed of the meeting.
The new rules were imposed on all Air India Express flights from the Arabian Gulf and South East Asian countries to Indian destinations from last Thursday.
They state that the free baggage allowance would be reduced to 20kg for an adult, 20kg for a child and 10kg for an infant. Those who booked their tickets before August 22 are still allowed to carry 30kg of free baggage.
Seema Srivastava, the Gulf and Middle East regional manager for Air India and Air India Express, said: “The airline was losing about 20 passengers per flight to maintain the total weight on the flight, including passengers and baggage.
“The aircraft has a seating capacity of 185 passengers but we could only book 160 to 165. After cutting the baggage to 20kg, the airline can book all seats on the flight.”
The IMA president, T?A Abdul Samad, said the airline’s justification for reducing the baggage allowance – to allow more passengers – was not practical and his sentiment was echoed at a mass public meeting conducted by IMA at Kerala Social Centre in Abu Dhabi last week.
[ anwar@thenational.ae ]
