Batavia Air: Water, water everywhere

Batavia Air: Water, water everywhere

Just as the scandal about water being found in the tanks of a
Batavia Air aircraft was unfolding, I found myself desperately
trying to get tickets at Batam airport to return to Jakarta.

Having found that no tickets were available with most of the
airlines for flights that day, I continued walking on
despondently to the last airline ticket offices. Leaving
Sriwijaya Airline's ticket office after having been told there
were no tickets available, I was approached by a couple of ticket
scalpers offering me tickets for that very same airline, at a
rounded up and obviously marked up price, of course.

The next ticket office was Batavia Air. My wife, an
Indonesian, went up and asked for tickets and they offered one
way to Jakarta at about 600,000 rupiah each. There were two
people in the office: a young man and a woman. The man dealt with
my wife's enquiry. I was keeping out of sight suspecting that
prices might somehow (but I don't quite know how) be bumped up
for a bule.

My wife came to me to confer about the flight time, etc. After
a brief discussion with my wife, we both went up to the ticket
office to request tickets. Alas, before we even got near the
ticket office the man shouted out 800,000 rupiah! Suspecting
something was amiss, I asked if I could check his ID and found
that he was an aircraft engineer "working" for Batavia Air.

When we walked away in disgust after making it patently
obvious that we were displeased, our new engineer friend ran out
of the ticket office and squared up to me. He looked rather
aggressive, like he wanted a showdown. I gave him a piece of my
mind and he went back into the ticket office with his tail
between his legs.

Now, shouldn't an aircraft engineer be checking and fixing
planes and all that sort of thing, rather than selling tickets
and behaving like a thug? You never know, there might just be
water in the fuel tanks, or something.

Clement Weather, akarta