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EWR-BRU-BOM-BLR on 9W

 
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sshank
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:59 pm    Post subject: EWR-BRU-BOM-BLR on 9W Reply with quote

EWR-BRU-BOM-BLR on 9W

A couple of weeks after saying "I dont plan to becoming a 9W FFP" on a different post, I, not only now have an 9W FFP account, I am also the proud owner of 8000 odd JP miles. Well, stuff comes up I guess - read on ...

It was a recent Monday morning and I got one of those calls from India - its a family emergency. I need to get to BLR asap. I did not have a whole lot of time to explore options. I jumped on to Expedia and did a quick search. Nope - no *A options with out giving up an arm and a kidney. Since I am rather attached to my body parts, I decide to pass on LH and the like and quickly came to the realization that the only options are AI, 9W, Virgin out of EWR, in addition to come other convoluted routings on AF and BA from PHL. Of the lot 9W seems to be the best option and the fare was reasonable as well (especially given the same day purchase). I figured I'll buy it off the 9W website - ha guess again. Nope - 9W will not sell me a ticket as its less than 24 hours before departure! WTF? - is there a department in the basement of their Andheri HQ where a bunch of geniuses come up with stuff like this? Well, its back to Expedia and sure they have no problem selling me a ticket. That done I headed home to pack - I had all of 2 hours to pack and head out. EWR is hour and half drive from where I live and long term parking is a hike from the terminal as well.

I made it to the check-in in good time at about 5:00 PM for the 6:30 departure. Since I am a no-status economy passenger I ended up in the economy line - the entire Gujju community of Jersey seems to be in attendence as well. Eventually, I reach the counter - even though its still 90 mts to departure I am one of the last to check in - I guess 9W pax like to check in early. I negotiated an aisle seat with the fellow who seems to be a contract employee - but he was pleasant enough and was shocked to see that all I have is a small roll-aboard and a backpack. Just before heading out to EWR I had signed up for a 9W FFP account - I have that entered into the system as well. I am now a Jet Privilege "Blue" member. Well, here is a blurb from the welcome email from my new best friend Rahul Kucheria who apparently is the General Manager of relationship marketing - "You will receive a laminated peel-off Blue card on completion of your first activity and the permanent Jet Privilege membership card will be sent to your mailing address 2-3 weeks after you have recorded your 5th activity or accumulated 5,000 JPMiles in your account." Whoa there - I will have my very own JP card after just 5 activities (meanwhile I wonder as to the sorts of activities Rahul his crack team of relationship marketers were thinking off). I felt lucky right away.

Check in done, I go through security - since this ticket was purchased same day, I have the dreaded "SSSS" on my boarding card - yes, lots of fun as I am pulled in for the secondary. The TSA fella though is very professional and thorough and I am waved through after he is done swabbing and testing every corner of my backpack for explosive residue. I made my way to the gate for my first glimpse of the 77W VT-JEA. Its already 5:45 and and looks like boarding has started. I ask the dude standing nearby what rows were being called for boarding "they are boarding the flight to Mumbai" he answers. Hmmm... thanks, thats helpful. The boarding though was reasonably efficiently handled - and being the front of the Y cabin I am among the last to board.

Its little past 6PM and I finally clambered aboard and parked myself in my seat 31H. The 77W was spotlessly clean and very tastefully furnished in a nice dark red upholstery. The seats looked comfortable, though I am in general not a fan of slimline seats. They actually did turn out to be fairly comfortable, or about as about comfortable an economy seat can get - yes, I know, its a little like saying 'he is the friendliest child molester I have ever met', but you get the idea.

The doors closed a little after 6:30 - and it was going to be a full flight. We pushed back about 6:40 and headed towards 22R. Its was not a particularly long taxi (which is surprising for EWR) and a little after 7:00 PM we are lined up and the big GE90s spooled up. Its was a nice muffled roar as we charged down 22R and took off right over evening rush on the New Jersey Turnpike. Meanwhile the Gujju gang seated next to me is having a bout of separation anxiety - the rest of the group is a few rows behind, and would I volunteer? - sure no problem. Well there is one problem though - the IFE screens do not work, hmmm ... however the middle seat is empty. That seems like a reasonable trade-off and I moved my shop to 37H.

About 45 minutes after take off service starts - with the FAs pushing what appears to be really heavy cart up the fairly good incline (we are still on our climb). I wonder about the drink service - well, it turns out that this is the combined dinner/drink service. I dunno - dont most asian/euro carriers do a separate drink service before dinner even in economy? After the day I have had, I need a drink (or two). Well, I wait for my row to be served. And I wait. 8:00 comes and goes and the cart has advanced all of 3 rows. 8:30 PM comes and goes as well. And its 8:45 when my new friend - lets call her Sonali, in a generic Hindi movie kind of way, comes down to my neighborhood with her cart. As she gets close its clear why its taking her this long. Idiot passengers are asking (demanding) all kinds of nonsensical things - stuff they would never ask a LH or BA flight attendent. And poor Sonali trying to be polite - going "noooo sar, I only have tomato juice". 9W needs to figure a way to deal with stupid passengers asking for 'nariyal pani' or 'bhang lassi' or something ridiculous. Finally its my turn (yay!) Veg or non Veg - "veg please" and I am served. They have Heineken and Stella (both unfortunately not very cold) - Stella it will be.

Some general observations reg 9W dinner service. Its clear that they are no SQ: SQ does a drink service prior to meals (with an excellent choice of wines/beers). With 9W not only was there no drink service, the beer was not cold, service was very long drawn and inefficient (they were out of white wine as well - something that pissed off the folks in the seats behind me). There was also fair bit of trading between FAs - with stuff being exchanged across the aisle "Vicky - can I have xxx? and "Sonali do you have that". The food though was good (though I was not blown away) - its been a while since I flew AI, but my guess 9W is on par or maybe a notch below. And I had to flag Sonali down for the second Stella - I remember the AI aunties doing a better job here with refills. The general sense I get is that they are still trying to get their act together - the cabin crew while enthusiastic and helpful were equally amateurish and inefficient (which surprised me because they are very good on their domestic runs).

Then it was lights off for a little nap. Before that was the ridiculous sight as the FAs made the round adamantly demanding that people down the shutters (I have seen other airlines make a polite request on PA) - this was pretty hilarious. There was no way we are going to see any daylight on this segment (and yes it was dark as midnight when we reached BRU).

Looking at the passengers - it is clear that they are getting the VFR market, families with kids and others making their annual vacation. If my parents were coming down, I will be glad to buy them a ticket on 9W (so they are - I dont know, a reliable Air India?). I had a Gujju bhai next to me from Stamford going to Surat (he owns a liquor store - but tragically does not drink). And there were many more like him. My bags were about the last to show up in Mumbai - so based on the addresses posted on the baggage it appeared that well over half of the pax were Gujarat bound (Vadodara, Surat, Navsari, 'Amdavad', Bharuch, Jam Nagar, Dahej, on and on ...)

OK, back to our journey ... and in a couple of hours the 'mood' lighting came on - it was time to wake up I guess (not that anyone slept - it was now midnight EST). Its time for the breakfast - well sort of. This was a total missed opportunity - it was supposedly a continental breakfast. If you were expecting a proper breakfast you would be disappointed. Yes, its been only a couple of hours after dinner - but still a proper breakfast with a desi option would have been a way for 9W to differentiate themselves from the non desi carriers.

We landed at BRU with the local time just past 7 AM (1 AM EST) and pulled into the terminal to join a couple of other 9W birds. Its been a while since I have been to BRU (the days when Sabena used to fly to MAA) and I remembered it being a relatively easy airport to connect. It remains the same with one difference. Now between the hours of 7 AM and 10 AM the terminal B is overrun by desis! The setup is fairly simple - you disembark with your hand baggage, go past a security screening and then go up one level your gate. It takes all of may be 20 mts to do so. Then there is the frustrating wait of nearly three hours. There really is not much by way of duty free or other shopping - so there is not much else to do but wait. I think this whole transit circus is needlessly long -it can surely be done in an hour and a half. Also, that would allow 9W to push the departure at EWR from a ridiculous 6:30 PM to say a more reasonable 8 PM (so that one can put in a full work day).

Its 9:15 AM local time, and it was time to get back to our 77W. The rest of the journey to BOM was pretty uneventful and we made it to BOM by around 11:30 PM. They did not have a gate for the flight so were remote parked and disembarked by stairs. The 77W is a seriously impressive bird - and standing next to the massive GE90 you get a sense for how big the engine really is.

Immigration in BOM was painless and took all of 5 minutes - then was the wait for the baggage. It took a good 45mts for our EWR loaded bags to show up (the JFK and YYZ connecting bags came first). That done it was time to make the trek to the Dom terminal. There is now the air side shuttle from Int to Dom which runs hmmm... lets just say when ever the bus shows up. There was quite a crowd thanks to multiple arrivals at that point. After about close to an hour I made on the the second or third bus - (not that I was in a hurry, I had a couple of hours to kill).

I made it to the deserted domestic terminal 1B at about 2 PM. The coffee Day by the check in had shut down and was only selling the sandwiches. I went down the side alley just before the security to the coffee shop I knew would be open - and it was. After picking up coffee I waited by the security which opened a little before 2:30 AM. And a little after 2:45 9W announced the departure of the BLR flight operated by an ATR72. The flight was fairly light about 30 pax - mostly international connections. The service was excellent - infact both the BLR based FAs were wonderful right from grabbing the jacket from me on boarding to the meal service making me wonder why the 9W experience on the international segment was so mediocre. We pushed back a few minutes before our scheduled 3:15 AM departure - there was virtually no wait for the runway and soon we were tearing down R27 (yes, its a prop plane - but still) for a quick takeoff. 9W has a full breakfast service on this graveyard run with mini idlys, upma and the works. The flight was light and the crew soon shut of all the lights - so much so that passengers had trouble finding their way back to their seats after the bathroom trip. In a little while we began our descent to BLR and landed right on schedule at about 5:15.

On the whole - I think the 9W experience was good, but clearly there is room for improvement. The hard product is excellent, and the food is decent; but the rest of the experience right from check in to cabin service was quite mediocre and left me a little underwhelmed. Perhaps the expectations based on the 9W Domestic service was too high - but that does not take away from the fact that this was no SQesq experience. The BOM transit is still a pain - though there may not be much 9W can do here. While I had no problem - some of the older folk were confused and having a hard time figuring out the bus and other such, which is unfortunate.

P.S. 9W generously gave me 50% mileage credit for the EWR-BOM-EWR segments and 100% credit for the BOM-BLR-BOM segments - resulting in me ending up with 8800 odd JP miles. Howver, in true 9W fashion - even though there are awards available for less that 8000 miles (for example a BLR-BOM one way award is 8xxx miles), you cant redeem anything untill you have accumulated 10,000 miles!


Last edited by sshank on Tue Dec 23, 2008 9:18 am; edited 2 times in total
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Jaysit
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No airline will give you anything more than a croissant, a muffin and some canned fruit (if you're lucky) for breakfast in Economy. AI has done away with breakfast altogether in all classes of service on transatlantic runs given the short duration of the US-UK flights. I suppose they serve a small breakfast on their non-stops.

Also, the competition across the Atlantic - Virgin, KL, for example - have started to combine their drinks/meal service. But KL will ply you with alcohol much in the same way that AI does.

If you say that 9W's domestic FAs are so good, then why aren't they being employed on the international runs instead of the clueless stupid ones?
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Nimish
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 1:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jaysit wrote:
If you say that 9W's domestic FAs are so good, then why aren't they being employed on the international runs instead of the clueless stupid ones?


No idea - but it's obvious there's a huge difference in the quality of the service on board 9W domestic vs. intl. And no, I don't think it's anything to do with "demanding desis asking for bhang lassi"!

I don't think 9W have really understood the operational aspects of wining/dining ~300 pax in Y. It's simple in domestic Y - just veg/nv and you're on your way. But on the intl routes, the drinks options are far more numerous. Plus they seem to have really slow FA's and often just one FA on an aisle. Hardly the way to offer fast service!
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Jaysit
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

But I thought they'd hired ex SQ and ex TG staff to bring the young clueless desi FAs up to snuff.
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sshank
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 9:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jaysit wrote:
Also, the competition across the Atlantic - Virgin, KL, for example - have started to combine their drinks/meal service. But KL will ply you with alcohol much in the same way that AI does.

If you say that 9W's domestic FAs are so good, then why aren't they being employed on the international runs instead of the clueless stupid ones?


I think not doing an drinks run is inexcusable - especially since 9W fancies itself as being in the same league as SQ and CX. I don't know if its bacuase they dont serve alcohol on the domestic runs - so may be they feel its not required. I can understand skipping this for a late night departure but not an early evening one. I boarded at 6:30 PM, and it was past 8:45 PM when I was served anything - this is simply unacceptable. What would be classy is a drinks run with some indian tit bits or cashews.

Many of the FA's seemed very young, may be the seasoned ones are avoiding the international flights? Also, in SQ there is a supervisor around to ensure that things are ship shape - I saw no one here looking over things.
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avbuff
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

First of all an excellent Trip Report, even without the pictures.

9W surely is inconsistent on the long haul sectors. Strangely 9W offered a separate drinks service on my flight from Doha to Mumbai ( but combined it on Mumbai Doha as it was a morning flight).

Your meal was fine on a 7hr run IMO, I guess only if your flight is 10 hrs+ you get 2 full fledged meal services.
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sri_bom
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

sshank wrote:
Jaysit wrote:
Also, the competition across the Atlantic - Virgin, KL, for example - have started to combine their drinks/meal service. But KL will ply you with alcohol much in the same way that AI does.

If you say that 9W's domestic FAs are so good, then why aren't they being employed on the international runs instead of the clueless stupid ones?


I think not doing an drinks run is inexcusable - especially since 9W fancies itself as being in the same league as SQ and CX. I don't know if its bacuase they dont serve alcohol on the domestic runs - so may be they feel its not required. I can understand skipping this for a late night departure but not an early evening one. I boarded at 6:30 PM, and it was past 8:45 PM when I was served anything - this is simply unacceptable. What would be classy is a drinks run with some indian tit bits or cashews.

Many of the FA's seemed very young, may be the seasoned ones are avoiding the international flights? Also, in SQ there is a supervisor around to ensure that things are ship shape - I saw no one here looking over things.


Nice TR, SQ does serve Indian titbits on the India legs along with the drinks.....

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77wfan
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Excellent TR!

Quote:
The 77W is a seriously impressive bird - and standing next to the massive GE90 you get a sense for how big the engine really is.


Touche! You could say that over and over again- 9W's planes are so spanking new- its criminal of us to ride in them!

Quote:
If you say that 9W's domestic FAs are so good, then why aren't they being employed on the international runs instead of the clueless stupid ones?


Well on my leg from PVG-SFO the FA who served me did mention that all cabin crew had to put in a year of domestic ops before they got upgraded and put into the LH and ULH segments. Maybe with all the downsizing going on they had to slip in a few inexperienced ones in? But I agree- for an airline that gained fame for service, the experience on their LH sectors are underwhelming at best. I found their KUL-MAA leg far better in terms of in flight service!
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stealthpilot
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I hope your trip back went as well as it could be, and nice TR even without the pics.
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