Indian-American Grammy-winning musician Ricky Kej blasted Air India, raising concerns about the airline’s customer service. In a lengthy thread, Kej shared two recent incidents on two flights—Delhi to Bengaluru on September 14 and Mumbai to San Francisco on September 20- prompting him to call out Air India on X.

Narrating the first incident, Kej shared that the ground staff at the check-in counter refused to accept UPI for his extra baggage, making him wait at least 50 minutes. The singer mentioned the names of four staff members who failed to help find a solution.

“They told me I need to go to a counter which was quite a walk away just to pay. I requested them to bring the wireless payment machine to the check-in counter, like all the other airlines do (I routinely pay for excess baggage due to the nature of my profession). They refused (Devika, Ravi Kumar, Mukeeta and Neha). So I walked to the counter they directed me to. The person at that counter (Sunil) refused to even look in my direction and rudely said he was busy — either I could wait there for a while or he directed me to their ticketing counter which is at the other end of the terminal,” he wrote.

“Finally after 50 min of this ordeal, and almost missing my flight, on my insistence, Devika called Sunil. He finally agreed to come to the check-in counter (where I was) with the wireless machine, and accepted the UPI payment which went through effortlessly in a few seconds. I left for security check and boarded the flight,” Kej shared.

In the second incident onboard the Mumbai-San Francisco flight on September 20, Kej noticed flight attendants initially did not respond to a passenger’s repeated call for service.

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“This shows the complete apathy that @airindia has for customers and as I said, it is a systemic issue that may take years to address. All 3 flight attendants did not care about passengers and 1 of them was partially on duty, accessing containers while not in uniform… she was obviously skipping her mandated rest. I am pretty sure there is CCTV footage for Air India to figure out the offending staff,” Kej wrote.

The singer, however, said he would continue to fly with Air India “unless it turns out there are major safety issues.”

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After the post gained traction on social media, Air India apologised to Kej, promising an investigation into the matter. “Dear Sir, we sincerely regret the inconvenience experienced during your travel. We are thoroughly investigating the issue and will take appropriate action. Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” the airline responded.

This is not the first time when Ricky Kej criticised Air India. In August, he lashed at the airline over repeated downgrades from business to economy class without any explanation.

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