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sabya99

Sabya’s return trip report: home coming to New Jersey from South Kolkata by AI 773/AI 191.

(Posted earlier in Skyscraper city Forum:)
My day of departure: My family bid me farewell with tearful eyes and soggy sky. I have ordered 1kg extra dry Sandesh for New Jersey consumption. Without making any further eye contact we jumped into an old Amby and Sumo. As usual VIP Road was under 3ft of water. After an hour we arrived in the domestic terminal , for me a first time. This nice little terminal reminds me of American small town airport. The ground level was well maintained , clean rest room and efficient AI staff. Our luggage was booked for final destination Newark, NJ. Only we have to change plane at Bom. It was raining hard, our flight AI 773 was delayed by half hour. As we were waiting upstairs security hold I noticed this is a very comfortable terminal, but somebody forgot that bong babus would fly in large number and this place will be saturated soon. I also met a few of Kolkata’s TECHIES using this terminal, they looked very promising to me.
Departure by KILO taxiway : Our Airbus A319 was brand new. I noticed in constructing domestic terminal the engineers wasted huge amount of apron frontage. This building should have at least 6 aerobridges instead of three. Ahead of our aircraft Emirate A330 was taxing from international terminal and behind us a red Kingfisher. Here in NSCBI airport taxiways are marked by blue edge lights. Secondary runway was being used as taxiway at this time. One taxiway (Bravo ? ) was under construction, but alpha taxiway ,the old horse of the airport still functional. Soon we entered 19R ramp area, a signage appeared K-19R-K., then it became K-19L-K. We are using Kilo taxiway. There was a red stop bar in the middle of the taxiway controlling traffic and we were on hold. Suddenly Emirates A330 took off from 19L turning pad with thundering noise. A little while later an ATR landed from north side. Then our aircraft took to take off position south facing main runway. Just at that time I saw red Kingfisher on the kilo taxiway waiting for departure. Kilo taxiway intersects main runway with a 10,000 ft runway clearance south facing. Such a large distance is good enough for all narrow body aircraft lunch. This has reduced runway occupancy time and use of 19L turning pad considerably. Amidst thunder, heavy monsoom rain we took off; nothing much was visible. Before vanishing in dark sravan cloud I prayed for peace and prosperity of Kolkata. A nice hot meal was served!
Landing at Bom: From east one could approach Bom either over the huge dharavi slum then land on the east side of main runway or south side of angled runway. Or fly past Bom docks, Malabar hills and entire western sea face of Bom, then land on the western end of main runway. Pilot announced we will be late by at least one hour or more and there are heavy cloud cover over Bom. When I noticed lights from ships I was sure we are going to land from west side of main runway. Nothing could be seen down below. There were heavy static discharge and arcing all over the wing tips. I thought the aircraft will be on fire. At last I could see the coastal Western Expressway a landmark for western approach. Our aircraft landed on the main runway, entered into domestic apron area, docked with aerobridge # 8.
Dreadful transshipment at Bom: We took the Volvo bus for transfer to international terminal. This bus bypassed the runway, then got out of the terminal into Dharavi slum, then it entered the international apron area and finally to departure ramp of Sahar terminal. Whole process took about 45-50 minutes. There were huge construction activity all around us. I suspected all along that I may miss the flight as we were already late , may be we have to spend the night inside the Dharavi slum! Near the departure lounge a crowd of 2000 strong have gathered to see off their relatives. These are mostly middle eastern labor traffic ; and they don’t speak Bangla, Hindi, English. How shall we enter AI terminal?
Somehow holding the hands of my children I entered the terminal. The CISF guard perhaps recognized us. An announcement was made for last call of AI191. I found a AI duty officer nearby and asked for his help. He immediately recognized us by our family name. Alerted aircraft of our delayed arrival. Then in 2 minutes our boarding pass was issued. At this time duty officer entrusted two escorts for us. First one bypassed the entire immigration line with 500 pax. and our passport was cleared off in five minutes. I noticed the high teck gadgets of Bom immigration counter. Once you stand before the inspector a hidden camera will take your picture and post it on monitor. Inspector will print the passport number into it. Once inside, a second escort ( Goutam ) again bypassed the security check line. We were allowed to pass through in 10 minutes which would otherwise take two hours. We started to run for gate. Before entering the aerobridge they X-rayed our shoe and belts . We walked in the plane holding shoe in our hand. But I had to thank AI for not dumping us in the slum!!Perhaps city of Bom should have two airports: one for middle eastern traffic and other one for USA/European traffic. This airport is no match in comfort level with Del T3. I recommend CCU passengers should take Del as transshipment point .
Bom. To Newark 7800 nautical miles: AI B777 will cover this distance in 15-16 hrs. It was uncomfortable to sit in the plane for such a long time. In our plane most pax. were from Gugarat, Bangalore, Bombay area, only a handful from Kolkata. Our aircraft flew over to Gugarat, Sindhu, Baluchistan, Afganistan. Then it took the same semicircular route that AI 101/102 takes. Down below it was all dark. But passengers were well behaved. I could not find a single Sardarji ( AI101 40% Sardarji ). As usual AI food was very good but perhaps not as good as AI 101. After 12 hrs. of flight when we were crossing Labrador channel, breakfast was served with delicious rossmalai. Who else will serve rossmalai at 35000ft ? Perhaps it was made of Bangla cow milk. As I could distinguish between Bangla cow milk and Jersey cow milk quite well.
Upon entering NY airspace our aircraft stayed in the Hudson river valley. Over the city of Troy (upstate NY ) aircraft started to lose altitude. I could see Hudson river and Catskill mountain. Then it took a semicircular turn over Morris/ Somerset county, then to Linden/Elizabeth area. We landed from south side of the airport on the outer runway adjacent to NJ turnpike. Aircraft rolled into a rapid exit taxiway without taking any wide turn. Here a red stop bar stopped our plane for some time.
Magic of parallel runway.: The separation between the two parallel runway system at Newark is about 900ft ( Kolkata 650 ft ). Huge B777 parked on a holding bay in between the two runways. I could see both inner and outer runways were launching aircrafts unidirectionally with a gap of 15 second. The outer runway launched A340/330, while inner one launched mostly B737 and turbo. In about 4-5 minutes 10-15 flights took off. Then red stop bar switched off, we rolled into apron area and docked with the aerobridge. Upon deplaning Capt. Menon saluted us.
Immigration checks were very simple as the terminal was not crowded at all. In the customs check point they asked us about agri. products. But my extra dry Sandesh crossed US customs check point with flying color, I am proud of it. We were home in one hour and tired Sabya settled down in his living room over fine music.
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Sabya99

PAL@YWG · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:47 am Post subject:

Nice TR, Sabya. A long journey described matter-of-factly in few paragraphs.
Connecting via BOM is very scary as some other AInetters mentioned here. Good that you could make the connection...I could easily feel what was going thru in your mind at that time...

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Very nice trip report, Sabyasachi, thank you for sharing this with us! I completely second Mr. Pal's appreciation of your noticing small points of your interest, and describing them in detail (the taxiways, the lights, and the developments around CCU). I am a bit surprised that you found the domestic terminal nice - this is possibly a new development in light of the new terminal coming up. I may get a chance to check on this either sometime this month, or early next month. For CCU's sake, I hope the nice and clean visage you saw that day, was not a one-off bright day. On my last two trips, the only nice parts of the domestic terminal I noticed, were the gates 2 and 2A.
I am also surprised that Air India did not through check-in you and your family from CCU, right up to EWR. On my Beijing trip last year (whose Part 2 is in the works right now), my acquaintance from Bengaluru was checked in on a domestic BLR-DEL flight, which connected to his DEL-HKG Air India flight, and the HKG-PEK Air China flight. His baggage was checked in right at BLR itself, and he went through immigration there itself. I guess this may have something to do with DEL T3 as Air India's hub, though with the legendary efficiency that Mumbai is well-known for, why this could not have been done - beats me.
I really liked the different sections of your report - each with a separate heading, and separate thread of thought. If I may ask, when did you make this trip? Further, how did your family take the confusion at BOM?
Thanks, Sumantra.

Nimish · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 11:25 am Post subject:

Thanks for posting, and glad you could make the connection at BOM. Your example illustrates why the BOM transfer experience is so horrible, and why it's such a relief to fly on EK/ LH/ SQ etc. and transfer via DXB/ FRA or SIN instead of BOM!
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We miss you Nalini!

sabya99 · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:35 pm Post subject:

@ Mr.Pal, Sumantra and Nimish; thanks for commenting on my trip report. It was never analyzed this way before!
Duty officer knew our last name possibly from passenger lists. But our name was not announced or I could not notice it. Perhaps they were prepared of late arrival of connecting passengers from CCU. There was another issue I forgot to mention. Permission to overfly Afganistan air space was granted very late after our arrival in the aircraft, it was announced by the pilot.
This flight took place on 7th August 2011, Kolkata had 4 inch of rain. There were not many passengers in the domestic terminal. Perhaps that might be the reason it looked so clean. Also I am used to travel through Kolkata’s vintage international terminal ( which is nothing but a cowshed with aerobridge). Compared to that this domestic terminal looked much nicer. At least it had nice lights and waiting areas. Hopefully new terminal will be even better!
Our luggage was booked for Newark, NJ but we were instructed to get new boarding pass from Bom check in counter. I didn’t know why such arrangement!
@ Nimish, I thought of flying by EK, but I had good experience of AI101/102. I didnt expect transshipment at Bom will be that troublesome. My 15 years old daughter was scared that nite as she had never seen so many desi men under one roof! It was a CISF guard that helped us to pass through. By all means Bom must have two airports. Very Happy

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Sabya99

aeroblogger · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:52 pm Post subject:

Nice TR! Reminded me exactly why I refuse any itineraries with a BOM terminal transfer quite nicely.

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Nimish · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:21 am Post subject:

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Nimish · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 12:25 pm Post subject:

aeroblogger · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 1:34 pm Post subject:

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Thanks a lot, Rohit. I guess the rule is something like `if the point of domestic-international transfer has two separate terminal buildings, the Immigration and Customs have to be cleared at the latter.' The airports in question are DEL and BOM, since some like JAI have separate terminals, but the Air India DXB flight connects from the old Air India terminal itself.
An example, and some questions, after that.
An example: an Air India passenger boarding at CCU/BLR, for an international flight via DEL (T3) clears the Immigration and Customs at CCU/BLR, even if the flight number of the domestic leg is different (it is the same in some cases).
Some questions:
1. What about a Spicejet/Indigo passenger coming from a domestic flight (from CCU/BLR, say), to transfer to an international one in DEL? This will be a T1C-T3 transfer. This will possibly be done land-side, necessitating a Immigration and Customs clearance at IGI T3, and not at the source airport.
2. What about the old days of IGI T2, after the GMR group took over DIAL? The transfer was air-side, and not land-side.
Thanks, Sumantra.

aeroblogger · Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2012 2:48 pm Post subject:

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Thanks a lot, Rohit!

justbala · Member Joined: 11 Jan 2007 Posts: 1898 Location: Bangalore