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Shivank17 · Member Joined: 31 Mar 2012 Posts: 3

Welcome to my first trip report, which should've been years ago if not for me being lazy and not clicking pictures on board. But this time mid-flight, I decided it's time to start. So here it is!

Background
A short trip from Mumbai to Rajahmundry, India via Hyderabad came up before I return to university in Malaysia next month. Rajahmundry is a small city near Hyderabad, while Mumbai-Hyderabad is operated by almost every Indian carrier, Hyderabad-Rajahmundry is operated only by 9W and SpiceJet. With 9W sale, the fare was only slightly more than SpiceJet and given 9W is now completely a full service plus reliable unlike SpiceJet of late, it was a no brainer to go for 9W.

Mumbai - Hyderabad 9W 7017/Codeshare S2 4345

While officially this is a Jet Konnect marketed flight, 9W has decided to do away with their LCC and hence now offers the same service on board all flights.

Jet Konnect fleet mainly comprises of erstwhile Air Sahara's Boeing 737-700s, which are a good 10+ year old aircrafts, and unlike Jet's other 737s(which are badly cramped) have good legroom in bulkhead seats, and hence I took seat 10F during web-check in.

Airport and Check-in:

Mumbai Airport is one of a kind in the sense that it's located right in the city centre and hence getting there means having to face considerable traffic unless it's a red-eye or early morning flight. My flight was to depart at 1:15 PM and I reached the airport at around 12:00 PM, just in time I guess.

Jet Airways operates from Terminal 1-B of Mumbai domestic airport along with SpiceJet and IndiGo. Afternoon seemed relatively less crowded for Mumbai standards and check-in took me around five minutes with the onward boarding pass to Rajahmundry handed as well. Terminal 1B is relatively new but doesn't have much to offer with just two Cafe-Coffee Day cafes and a few more small eateries. Hence, I just grabbed a lemon refresher waiting for boarding to start. Boarding time was 12:30 PM but boarding did not begin before 1:00 PM due to delayed arrival of incoming aircraft.

VT-JFK heading to Bengaluru.

The Flight:
9W 7017/S2 4345
Sector: BOM-HYD
Aircraft: Boeing 737-700
Flight time: 1 hour and 20 minutes
STD: 13:15 hrs
ATD: 13:45 hrs
Seat: 10F
Class: Economy
Flight load: 80%
STA: 14:35 hrs
ATA: 15:00 hrs

Jet Konnect fleet is coloured in light blue with the classic Jet symbol on the tail. Jet plans to repaint them to match their livery and operate as one airline soon.

Although boarding was late, it was rather quick and the aircraft was ready to pushback shortly after boarding was completed. Jet has arguably the best looking crew in India after Kingfisher's demise, but often the crew is disinterested and unbothered, at least from what I've noticed. Greetings on entering on board always seem "forced" from Jet unlike Singapore girls or Middle-easter airlines. However, this flight had one really nice crew member for a change, who was courteous and never rude, in spite of dealing with typical Indian passengers.

Seat

Legroom

The seat had the same old Air Sahara clothing and on these B737-700s there are only two rows of Premiere plus economy is separated from Premiere with only a half-curtain, which means ample of legroom for bulkhead seats!

10 minutes after take-off the cabin crew sprung into action. I had pre-ordered a low-sodium meal and the courteous cabin crew was quick to confirm it with me and served me first. The meal comprised of rice, indian bread, green chicken curry and a cauliflower dish along with yogurt. All this on a 1 hour and 20 minute long flight. The taste was rather average but brownie points to 9W for this on such a short sector. It was followed by a tea/coffee service which is again good job from 9W. I've also noticed that since the end of 2014, when 9W made food complimentary on all it's flights, the quality has surely gone up with the variety of meals. On my last Delhi-Mumbai flight at 5PM which would be for snacks, they served two great chicken dishes and followed it with Strawberry ice-cream and tea/coffee, on a 2 hour domestic flight. Food is surely improving on 9W after a few cost-cutting years.

Apologies for no food pics on this sector, it was only after the meal I decided that I should I write a TR about this trip!
Jet Konnect offers no IFE to speak but does provide the same in-flight magazine as 9W, Jet Wings. Jet Wings has become more of an advertisement book of late but does have some valuable tour guides of selected places. Also, I love reading this Tarot/Soothsayer section because it's the only one I've ever come across which has been so accurate.

JetWings August 2015

The Soothsayer Wink

After that it was almost time for decent and eventual landing into Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, Hyderabad.

RGIA, Hyderabad on landing.

ARRIVAL & TRANSFER:

Hyderabad has a mid-size modern airport and transfers here are easy with bag-tag change and going through security desk exclusively for domestic transfers. As soon as I was done with that, I head towards my gate, 25-D for the next sector. Boarding started just five minutes after I reached there, it was a good day I reckon.

The Flight:

9W 2797
HYD-RJH
Aircraft: ATR 72-500
Flight time: 1 hour and 10 minutes.
STD: 15:55 hrs
ATD: 15:55 hrs
Seat: 1A
Class: Economy
STA: 17:05 hrs
ATA: 17:00 hrs

Our ride to RJH, an erstwhile Air Sahara ATR 72-500.

On entering the aircraft, the first thing I notice is that it's an Air Sahara aircraft again, with the clothing on cabin crew seat being the distinct Air Sahara red/green/blue. The aircraft was rather old and seats weren't clean as well. I had the bulkhead seat which was also the Emergency exit seat so ample legroom but in order to not obstruct the emergency exit, the armrest on the side of the exit was half the normal size. Rather uncomfortable, plus the seat's recline control was broken, so it would recline every time I would put some pressure on it. High time to change these seats or the aircraft, 9W.

The bulkhead/exit row.

Bad-quality leg room shot. :p

Cabin crew was rather uninterested but professional. Shortly after takeoff, a snack box was served which is again amazing to see. Even on a short ATR flight, they followed my meal preference of low sodium meal and my snack box consisted of a French bread filled with chicken and mayo and salad consisting of fresh Papaya. While the regular meal consisted of White yeast bread with veg/non-veg filling and a small chocolate bar instead of the Papaya in mine.(Winning!) Again, kudos to 9W for a good filling snack on such a short ATR flight. I often fly domestic in Malaysia and Malaysia Airlines in spite of charging higher for similar distances just serve peanuts and juice on board while Malindo gives you wheat biscuits and water although they offer really cheap prices, so makes sense.

A nice snack box along with Sky-mart brochure.

Low Sodium Meal consisting of a chicken sandwich and fresh Papaya Pieces = A+

Landing was on time and Rajahmundry airport being a small airport only operates around 4 flights a day, with no other aircraft being on ground when 9W landed. Baggage reached the belt in no time cause of the empty airport. Right after we deplaned, the flight was returning to Hyderabad with passengers.

Cabin after deplaning

Post landing at RJH.

The small RJH airport.

Ratings:

9W 7017/S2 4345 BOM-HYD:
Check-in: 9/10
Aircraft: 7/10
Seat and legroom: 8/10
Food: 8/10
IFE: N/A
Crew: 8/10

Overall: 40/50

9W 2797 HYD-RJH:
Check-in/Transfer: 9/10
Aircraft: 6/10
Seat and legroom: 6/10
Food: 10/10
IFE: N/A
Crew: 6/10

Overall: 37/50

CONCLUSION: 9W's domestic product seems really solid for such short flights and their food on board is improving again. However, old equipment certainly hurts 9W, more so on international flights. They've removed wide body aircrafts from all short to mid-haul international routes except India-Hong Kong and are also planning to sell a number of their wide-body aircrafts, which in my opinion hurts their chances to compete with the likes of Gulf carries/SQ/CX in the region. Yet they really can't go all extravagant on it as the only Indian airline which did that did not really go down well. They're still the best in business in India and definitely more reliable than Air India, their only other full cost competitor in the domestic market.

Thanks for reading! Should come up with return trip review soon and 9W to Changi Singapore next month! Feedbacks and suggestions are appreciated. Smile

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binaiks · Member Joined: 15 Jul 2007 Posts: 162 Location: VOBL/VOCI

Nice TR..

abhijith16 · Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:24 pm Post subject:

Nice TR, mate!

Yeah, JCL was never ex-Air Sahara, you just got a very old ATR. They are in the process of refurbishing those..
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Shivank17 · Member Joined: 31 Mar 2012 Posts: 3

Shivank17 · Member Joined: 31 Mar 2012 Posts: 3

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

Shivank, thank you for a lovely TR to start off proceedings on the forum!
And an exotic one, to a destination which hasn't been covered as yet, on this forum: Rajahmundry!
Mumbai airport in the city centre: I guess old-time Mumbaikars wouldn't agree, since Santa Cruz is hardly Mumbai/Bombay. The city has grown by leaps and bounds in such a way that what was once an outside suburb, is now of the centre-most points, without any scope for expansion. The meal sounds good in quantity, though you say that the taste was average. Jet's food offering, as you hav rightly observed, seems to have improved post their transformation into an all-FSC avatar, as we hear from other accounts.
The auto-recline ATR seats: I guess you haven't been on one of the ancient Air India Regional ATR-42s, I guess. Much has been said about those, on this forum Smile

The low-sodium meal on the ATR leg looks nice!
Thank you for the RJA pictures as well, a place exotic for many of us.
Thank you once again, you have given us a sneak preview of things to come. We look forward to that, eagerly.
Cheers, Sumantra.

ameya · Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2015 8:53 am Post subject:

Nice TR Shivank. Binai has already mentioned about the ATR - AIr Sahara combo being non existent .

Rajahmundry is RJA

Interesting pic of the terminal. From a single or double flight wonder - glad to see these airports come a long way
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Optimus.Prime · Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 3:03 pm Post subject:

I second everyone else in saying Sahara never had ATRs. Charlie-Lima is one of the oldest but has one of the best seats after JDC and JDD which are "Recaro-d". All in all I hope you enjoyed the ride on the ATR72-500. It's a gem of a puddle jumper.
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