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