• Introduction
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A
• Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3
• Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class

Since it was only me and the television in the Altitude Lounge at Delhi, I got bored pretty quick and decided to hang out at the gate after my breakfast in the lounge. It was going to be a full flight it seemed from the numbers that were lining up at the gate. While I’ve done tonnes of early morning flights and I’ve begun to not like them much, I like the fact that planes are back at their base and hence there is less chance of a delay in the morning flights (unless there is weather-related delays!). At the scheduled boarding time, which was 06:20 AM, there was nobody at the gate from Air India, while the passengers had already started to come around at the gate.

Empty gates

Passengers are there!

VT-PPT, the Air India Airbus A321 which will be my ride to Mumbai

Anyhow, out of nowhere, a couple of people landed up at the gate in a very chatty spell in the morning, and boarding started at about 6:30 AM. With my boarding pass, which was issued for Economy Class, there was a beep while boarding. The ground staff struck my seat number, and put a new Business Class seat number on my boarding pass. Three words that I love were uttered, “You’ve been upgraded!”. Woohoo.

Delhi(DEL) – Mumbai(BOM)
Monday, April 1 2013
Depart: 07:00AM
Arrive: 09:05AM
Duration: 02hr05min
Distance flown: 706 miles
Aircraft: Airbus A321
Seat: 3F (Economy)
Meal Service: Breakfast

Once on the plane, I found my way to my new seat. The plane was definitely running an almost full load going by the number of people boarding, since this was the end of a long weekend. I managed to get some pictures of the cabin, before it would start filling up.

While I loved the cabin hues in the Executive Class cabin, I can’t understand why does AI want to colour itself orange and red in the economy section, which is a tardy colour scheme at best.

As I settled in, I noticed there was no pre-departure drink service when the passengers arrived. Instead, the inflight crew was busy talking to each other, a flow from the chatty crew at the gates I presume. A while later, closer to doors closure, the purser came out offering a round of drinks to everyone. The options were grapes, orange and apple juice. I went with the grape juice.

With this hurried service, we were all set to take off and we did get on our way and airborne on time. Thirty minutes into the flight, the crew started to set up breakfast service.

Since there was no menu presented, I’ll roll out all the options presented to me during this meal service. First, cereal and fruits were offered to everyone. And there was an option to have hot milk or cold milk along with your cereal.

In a bit, the crew came back with meal options. The choice was pretty rich, however, presentation was not up to the mark. The crew was roaming around the cabin with the 4 meal options in a tray, and would serve whichever one you picked. There were two types of eggs, and a couple of vegetarian options if I remember correctly. There was the choice of cheese omelette along with sausages, or poached eggs, and idlis for South Indian breakfast (the flight went onwards to Coimbatore). I don’t recollect the fourth vegetarian option.

I sort of almost got bored and sleepy by the time they brought the bread basked out, but when they did, I was glad that the croissants were still in shape unlike Jet Airways where they always seem to be crushed under a roadroller before serving them. They also had some nice muffins along which went well with the coffee.

The meal was good, so I have to give that to them, unlike the very weak meal service in the economy cabin on my way into Delhi. However, presentation and attitude has not exactly been the forte of Air India crew for a very long time and they lost the plot on this plane too. Service wasn’t with a smile, but as if they were forced to work on the plane. I spent the rest of my time on the plane between napping and trying to finish some work. We arrived into Mumbai at about 8:50 AM, and within 10 minutes I was on my way to downtown Mumbai.

Like I said earlier, AI has a long way to go to become my airline of choice, because unlike in other parts of the world, in Asia, the airlines are still supposed to be hospitality-oriented, and Air India needs to learn that, apart from getting a better loyalty program before I look to them again.

How do you guys like Air India’s domestic services? Would you rather have me fly them or Jet Airways on my next domestic flight?

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• Introduction
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A
• Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3
• Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class

After a leisurely few days in Delhi, it was time to go back to Mumbai. I’m usually trying to look away from early morning flights, because I do my fair share on work travel, but this time, I was a little bit greedy to spend some more time at home with the family, so I booked up an early morning flight back. I arrived at the airport in good time, and proceeded to the Air India counters to collect my boarding pass at Terminal 3. Like you’d notice, there was a very long queue at one bank of counters for Monday Morning traffic (Row E), which was the economy counters. On the other side, there was no queue. These were the Golden Edge FFP member and business class queues. Guess where did I go to collect my boarding pass?

Security checks were quick, and once I was airside, I had to decide where I wanted to go for about the 45 minutes I ended up having to wait at the airport instead of the 15 I had planned for. Anyhow, I’d been to the Plaza Premiere Lounge multiple times, tried out the Amex Platinum Lounge as well, and there was the new Starbucks at Delhi T3 and the Altitude Lounge right across from the Amex Platinum Lounge which were the places I had not been to.

Fresh from my experience at the Altitude Lounge Mumbai T1A, I decided I’ll try out the Delhi Lounge as well so that I could figure out it Mumbai was a flash in the pan or the lounges had a particular brand standard which all of them would adhere to in terms of look and feel.

When I arrived, as usual, there were only two attendants at the lounge, and no passengers inside. They had a big iMac sitting at the reception, only to check-in passengers into the lounge, however, one of the attendants was catching up on morning news sitting there. I presented them with my ICICI Bank/Jet Airways American Express Sapphiro credit card and my boarding pass, and I was invited inside.

The Lounge seemed to have the same look and feel like the Mumbai one, however, I think it was bigger and maybe had some more seats. There were white bar stools and a white bar and a  lot of lounge chairs.

Even the Delhi lounge had a television lounge with a couch, which is what I chose to park myself with again. Immediately they brought me a drink of water, and asked me if I wanted juice or another beverage to start the morning.

I asked for some apple juice, which was served with potato chips and peanuts (beats me when you do that early in the morning!)

I was presented with the menu, which had quite some options. Since I was up early and hungry, I decided to call for a chicken sandwich, which actually was a pre-made sandwich which was grilled in their kitchen before serving. For breakfast, there was also the option to have cereal or toast.

While they were preparing the sandwich, i stepped out and took some more pictures.

A small business centre

Self serve drinks and snacks

Overall, an enjoyable experience to be here, because food is made to order and there are hot food options, and the lounge is not crowded at all, not unless ICICI/Amex build a critical mass of their jointly-issued premium credit cards.

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• Introduction
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Mumbai Terminal 1A
• Airborne: Flight AI 660 (BOM-DEL), Air India, Economy Class
• Check-in: ICICI/American Express Altitude Lounge Delhi Terminal 3
• Airborne: Flight AI 657 (DEL-BOM), Air India, Executive Class

After an enjoyable experience in the Altitude Lounge at Mumbai, it was time to board my first Air India domestic flight in months. I’d picked to fly an Airbus 321, because these are the newer planes for Air India on the domestic segments, and I guess they use these on the regional segments as well.

I’d pre-blocked my seats for months, as the Air India web-booking system allows you to do so. I suspect this would change after the unbundling guidelines coming into effect, and at least some preferred seats would become chargeable. However, in an act of goofyness, I ended up selecting seat 7E, which was the second row in economy, and a middle seat. Why would I do that? Because the seatmap showed no 7F seats, so I thought there will be no one to fight for the armrest here.

Mumbai(BOM) – Delhi(DEL)
Tuesday, March 26 2013
Depart: 05:00PM
Arrive: 07:00PM
Duration: 02hr00min
Distance flown: 706 miles
Aircraft: Airbus A321
Seat: 7E (Economy)
Meal Service: Snack

Boarding on the flight was sort of chaotic, since everyone wanted to get on the plane early. Since I was seated closer to the gate, I was able to move in quickly once boarding was announced.

Once inside, I reached out to my seat and I was totally surprised, like I mentioned earlier. It was not about being in a middle seat, but about finding out that there was a crew seat next to me, and no window to look out of. So I hoped, that there was going to be no occupant on that seat so that I could be left in peace at least. Here was my seat, next to the crew seat which was occupied, luckily, only during the takeoff and landing.

A peep into the forward cabin from where I was…

The flight completed boarding on time, and in fact we pushed back five minutes ahead of time to be on our way from Mumbai at 4:55 PM from the main runway 09-27. The saving grace for me was that there were PTVs in each seat, so I could watch the airshow.

The seat pitch was narrower than what I am used to at the B737s of Jet Airways, and more in line with the Indigo seats. Also, leg space was cramped, but then that was to be expected, no? I have always been amused as to why would Air India not have a single colour upholstery, specially since it cannot do this multi-color act tastefully. They had a chance with their new planes, but even on the 787 they screwed it up.

Once we were at cruising altitude, the crew immediately brought out the snack service, a-la hi-tea in the air. While I was not hungry much, I still did want to sample what Air India had on offer. Like in the usual style for all airlines in India, I was told I could have the vegetarian option, or the non-vegetarian one. No one told me what was on offer, and I decided to sample the vegetarian fare.

I was totally surprised with the greaseplate that was parked in front of me, since there were fried, or maybe half-burnt cottage cheese pakoras, and even the oil had not been soaked out of them before putting them under the foil. Along with that, there was a small puff, a very unappetizingly packed and presented sandwich and cling-wrapped chocolate mousse.

I was a bit put off by the unappetising presentation, specially since TAJSATS was their caterer, and they cater some of the best premium meals at Mumbai Airport. Anyhow, I worked through the snack, and had bits of everything, and the only thing that tasted like it should was the puff.

A little later I found an opportunity to click some more pictures of the economy cabin. You will notice that the flight was very full.

If you’d notice in this picture, most people are either watching the airshow, or are watching the same programming here. With airlines, I’ve almost come to segregate them in two kinds, either with on-demand IFE or none at all. And anyone who chose to invest in inflight screens recently, would have chosen on-demand programming. However, here I had a personal screen (with earphones), so that I don’t have to crane up my neck to watch something, but I’d had to catch the movie which was working in a loop. I put on some movie on a different channel out of the 6 they were dishing out, but most of the time I was reading my book. The PTV had a touch screen to manage volume and brightness, which could also have been done by controls in the armrest, however, the touch screens were so bad that I figured I had to touch something 3-4 centimetres away to target the right button on-screen. To explain, I would rather press a point few centimetres away from the Volume + button on screen because if I push it on the right spot, it might trigger the Brightness – button.

Midway through the flight, the captain announced that we were going to arrive at Delhi at about 1845, which made it an on-time arrival.

After another 30 minutes or so, we began our descent into Delhi, and touched down at 6:44 PM to get into the familiar structures of Delhi Airport’s Terminal 3.

I think while Air India had the right resources in place, they could not capitalise on them to make the flight a pleasurable experience. The attitude in their cabin crew alternates either between motherly or know it all, and I prefer friendly and pleasant. So, I would not exactly be on their planes again I guess, unless someone else was paying for my ticket and only wanted me to fly AI, or I guess they were significantly cheaper than another airline I’d prefer to fly (namely Jet Airways or Indigo).

On the way back, I tried out the Business cabin of Air India, so do check back later for another episode of this trip report.

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