In Maharaja's lap!

Okay, a post on something which happened a month back... it was on my first trip back home after coming to US. An honest confession - I loove aeroplanes, had always been fascinated with these mean machines and man's ability to be able to fly something weighing hundreds of tons and (ironically) made up of materials all found on ground! I have a habit of reading reviews, I find them amazingly informative, insightful and also amusing at times. So even in this case I read up couple of really interesting TRs on www.airliners.net before deciding upon the airline I wanna fly. A particularly great Trip Report (you can read it yourself here ) caught my eye and drew me to "new" Air India. Like Air India's self promotion, the TR seemed to scream its lungs out "Have you tried the NEW Air India?".......

So against the suggestion of practically everyone I knew in US, I went ahead and booked my return ticket from Chicago to Delhi on our national carrier. As an added bonus the tickets were quite competitive too but I guess the perks of flying AI would end here... Below is a small review of my experience on AI (few pros and relatively greater number of cons)

First the GOOD news :-
1. AI has started flying the state of the art B777 on select US routes - NY and CHI. These aircrafts have quite a generous seat pitch (almost 34" in Economy!!!) and decent leg space too.

2. Mood-lighting - these B777s have mood lighting and man the cabin looks beautiful n soothing once they are switched ON.. snaps coming soon.....
3. In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) - great AVOD screens with decent headphones... the flip side - bad collection of movies!!!
4. Food - For enthusiasts of desi food, no airline in this world will serve you better Indian Food than Air India... absolutely no comparison in this regard....Also AI is one of the very few airlines which serves free drinks on board (again in Economy).

Ok enuf of pros.. now for a larger list of cons.. I will only mention the select few which kinda perturbed me :-

1. In-flight service - the thing which according to me makes or breaks a good carrier. The sevice level in AI was below average. I flew 2 sectors - ORD - FRA and FRA-DEL and return, and the only time I got acceptable service was on my way back to US from FRA to ORD.... rest all were very very ordinary.. More so I was really irritated with the Behenji's (read Air Hostesses) on board the flight.. most of them were just too casual and indifferent.. one thing which particularly pissed me off was none of them had the courtsey to say "Welcome" after I said "Thank You!" Ok folks back home, please dont think I am being finicky here.. u expect these basic courtsey from air hostesses atleast!! They are India's ambassadors in some sort of way and when you stay abroad you take these stuff for granted... also there seemed to be a major underdose of "smiles" floating around!!

2. Delays - On my flight back to US, the flight was delayed.. I am not denying that this is something unusual on transcontinental routes but the worst thing was no one communicated this to us. I had a flight from CCU-DEL-ORD and I was supposed to change planes in DEL. In CCU no one cared to announce what is happening where the flight was delayed for around 2 hours (same as my transit time in DEL)

3. My ordeal with IFEs continued.. FRA - ORD the IFE wont start after the initial 10 mins.. and worst of all the collection was pathetic and exactly the same as that of my outward journey.. outdated movies and they did not even change the collection (I heard they are supposed to revamp the collection monthly) On the +ve side, I was not feeling that bad about the condn of the IFE

4. Co-passengers included 85% senior citizens, 10% foreigners and 5 % youngsters (and I am being generous here and counting people TILL the age group of 35 as "young").. May not be a big deal for many but helloooo it was for me!

All in all a pretty dissapointing experience.. Was I expecting more because of Mr Abrelosojos's TR or was I just being irrational? US carriers are notorious for their below average service whereas it is a common belief that Indian carriers and their service are the best in the world. Whatever it is, will I fly AI again? Unlikely... definitely it will not be my carrier of choice......