Thieves on the airplane?

Thieves on the airplane?

From Republika

On July 4 I flew with Sempati Air to Medan. The flight number was SG 500 and the plane was scheduled to leave at 9:30 a.m. but it was delayed until 10:30 a.m. The flight number was changed to SG 622 and the itinerary was altered to include a diversion to Batam. The flight from Jakarta to Medan took three hours.

On arrival I was surprised to find that the padlock on my travel bag had disappeared, although nothing in the bag was missing.

The flight back to Jakarta was SG 507, which was delayed from 6:35 p.m. to 10 p.m. We arrived in the city at midnight. I saw that my bag was not tampered with and I went home in peace.

At home I was startled to find that my perfume was missing and only its wrapper remained. Another bag of mine was emptied of several contents: a Walkman, 10 cassette tapes, some perspective music recordings and a pair of Esprit sunglasses.

The next day I went to the Sempati office at Halim Perdanakusumah to file a report. The managing director was not available but the district service manager Asep Riawan agreed to see me.

Asep told me that I should have made my report on arrival at the airport. He also said that if some items were missing then one solution was to compare the checked-in weight and the present weight. The difference would be multiplied by Rp 20,000. The resulting amount would be the value of the compensation.

The things I had lost weighed less than one kilogram but their aggregate value was far more than Rp 20,000.

The problem here is mainly the attitude of the Sempati personnel. When I told some friends about my experience they were not surprised because it was nothing new to them. They said that Sempati did not care and did not even respond to such reports.

As a customer I feel I have suffered a great loss. It is truly a very unhelpful service.

ITA SEMBIRING

Jakarta