Tea & sympathy

Acute competition in the airline business has reduced the frequency of flight delays, most of which now occur for wholly unavoidable reasons. Sometimes, though, employees of state-owned Air India seem to have forgotten that the old monopoly no longer exists. Recently, Flight AI665, which leaves Delhi at 8 a m and is usually full of businessmen flying to Mumbai to attend morning meetings, was delayed 90 minutes. The reason, according to the stony-faced ground crew: the cabin crew was late - the stewardesses, to be precise, not the pilots. A senior bureaucrat who was on the flight asked the stewardess on board whether this was true; her reply was a smile and the offer of a "nice cup of tea".