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jasepl · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 4257 Location: bund-bay

I was due in Nantes again for my appointment in mid-October, and my cousin and his wife were expecting her to give birth to their first child around the same time. She’s Jewish and turns out naming ceremonies are increasingly a big deal for the Jews (and here I thought us desi types were the only ones into it).

Seeing as how this would be the first such occasion in my family from either side, (no one else of my generation having produced offspring or even married yet), it was going to be a big deal in our family. The actual date of the ceremony wasn’t guaranteed though, since it is held on the first Saturday after the birth. But everyone worked around the expected due date (a Tuesday) and hoped she wouldn’t go into early labour!

They used to live in Lyons until recently, but moved south to Grenoble a few months ago. God only knows why – because pretty as it is, Grenoble is also incredibly dull. But then I suppose when you’re married and with child, that’s about all the excitement some people can handle.

It also basically means it is a right PITA to get to their house, since the perfectly useless Grenoble airport has no flights to any anywhere with long-haul service. There are an astounding number of operational commercial airports within two hours’ drive of anywhere in France, and same’s the case with Grenoble: Annecy, Avignon, Chambery, Geneva, Le Puy, Lyons, Nîmes, Saint-Étienne and Turin. All of them perfectly useless for me, except for GVA, LYS and TRN – at least one could connect to those three from a major European hub.

The most convenient option would have been to just take Air France all the way through (BOM-CDG-LYS-NTE-LYS-CDG-BOM). However, I’ve done AF so many times, I was looking for something different. Then came news of the “troubles” in France. Typically French overreaction reaction to something Sarkozy should have done a long time ago. The Brits passed even tougher reforms, and it all went through with barely a whimper. Though we knew that things would probably work out even if we flew to and through French airports, I just didn’t want to risk having to be sitting around waiting for hours.

Swiss are one of the few airlines flying India-Europe that I hadn’t tried and I’d heard very good things about them off late, and so the decision was made. Besides, GVA is about equidistant from Grenoble as LYS, so it wouldn’t have been a big difference if I had to entirely avoid the French airports. But Swiss confirmed that all of their flights to France were operating as planned, so we decided to just fly to Lyons and they could easily re-book us to Geneva if required.

This trip, Delna’s husband Nauzer (aka Bawa) was going to go with to help out and the final consensus was that Bawa and I would fly BOM-ZRH-LYS, spend a couple of days with the fam, then go cross country to Nantes and back, by when my mother would have arrived from Bombay. Eventually, Nauzer would go do something appropriately Bawa-esque in London, whilst mum and I would return home.

The eventual itinerary was:

LX: Bombay-Zurich-Lyons
AF: Lyons-Nantes
DS: Nantes-Geneva
LX: Geneva-Zurich-Bombay

I. Bombay-Zürich
With a 00h50 departure, Delna dropped us off at the airport around 23h15. I have never seen the outside drop-off and the inside check-in area so deserted. Before Delna had even reached the Highway, thanks to the usual jam on the Maratha/Hyatt stretch, we were checked in, immigration and security cleared and downstairs. The whole thing took about 25 minutes!

I don’t usually bother with airport lounges, unless I have a lot of time to kill. With about an hour to go, we decided to wait it out in the Lufthansa lounge, which is kind of hidden away behind the shops. The lounge lady directed us to the Business section on the right, saying that it was full, so if we couldn’t find a seat, to come back and she would let us into the First section. Full was an understatement; there are less people and more space at VT station platform at 6 pm! It was scary how many people had stuffed themselves in that little space! Back to lounge lady and into the First section. That wasn’t as badly packed, but still quite full. Not surprising with three LH group flights departing within two hours, plus the CO, SA, SQ and TG passengers (some of whom, I assume, have access to the LH lounges). Still, at least they have a lounge. Jet Airways, learn something.

Lesson learned, we decided to just wait in the food court area until we were ready to board. Bawa made a beeline for Pizza Hut and devoured a whole pizza and the garlic bread by himself. Disgusting.

Soon it was time to board and I was quite excited by this point, having looked forward to Swiss’ new business product for a few weeks now. We turned left into the mini cabin and were shown to our seats – a window/aisle combo in the second row of the two-row cabin. Their layout alternates between 4- and 5-abreast per row, with varying combinations of seats in each row:

If you’re in one of the even-numbered ‘A’ seats, you have masses of space on either side. Here’s a close-up of the actual seat.

We settled in, kicked off shoes, handed over jackets, accepted drinks, etc etc and the cabin was prepared for takeoff. All cabin announcements were in English, German, French and Hindi, with some of the more important ones in Italian too. In fact, every single FA spoke English, French and German (save the desi ones, I presume). Jet Airways, learn something.

And the Hindi announcements were in everyday parlance, not the convoluted, ‘shudh’ gibberish that most airlines tend to use that most people don’t even fully understand. Jet Airways, learn something.

After takeoff, I started up the IFE. At first, only the map was functional, but it was interspersed with highlights of Swiss’ destinations, including Bombay, and in Hindi, amongst other languages. Jet Airways, learn something.

In the meantime, I played around with the seat and had a look through the meagre contents of the amenity kit. The seat was extremely comfortable, turning into a fully flat bed and incorporating the usual lumbar and massage functions. There was plenty of leg room too, with a little pigeonhole at the base of the seat in front for shoes and a shelf just below the IFE screen for personal items. Add the large side table (or two side tables for some) and the sheer space was brilliant.

Looking around, all nine seats in this cabin were taken, and, I saw later, that there were maybe two open seats in the second business cabin. Only a handful of desis in Business though, with the vast majority of passengers being Caucasian. Looking ahead into First (before the curtains were drawn), five of the nine seats looked to be occupied; all five were desi. Two of the First passengers really stood out: a very large man, and his even larger wife, who held onto her handbag as if her life depended on it (maybe it contained some of the stash she needed to deposit with her bank)!

They soon handed out menus, followed by a drink run before starting the meal service. I'm not bothering with pics, because it was a simple enough affair, given the late hour of the flight.

Code:

Light Meal
Smoked salmon with asparagus and wasabi mayonnaise
Chicken tikka wrapped in courgette
***
Paneer chana chaat
Dahi pakodi
***
Mango Tiramisu
Rasgulla and rabdi
***
Beverages

Also, they handed out a separate breakfast menu, where you could mark off your selection before falling sleep, so they could plate your meal in advance and serve it all on one tray right before landing to maximise your rest. Much appreciated by all, I'm sure. Jet Airways, learn something.

I asked for a sparkling water – which turned out to be sparkling water, and not plain old soda. Jet Airways, learn something.

I wasn’t really hungry, so I decided to just get the dessert (which I really shouldn’t eat, but what the hell!). Bawa, on the other hand, decided to get the whole salmon and chicken deal. Disgraceful. I swear that was the main attraction between him and his gluttonous wife: to see who can out-eat the other. I forgot to take a pic of his meal unfortunately.

Anyway. the mango tiramisu was pretty good and I was happy. A few minutes later, the FA showed up with a plate of fondant and crème from First because “I saw how much you were enjoying your dessert!” The fondant was warm, gooey and brilliant and I was even happier.

I messed around with the IFE a bit more. The hardware is pretty good overall, and can be physically adjusted to match your preferred angle depending on if you’re sitting, reclining or lying down. However, the selection was rather sparse and all over the place. And I wish they fixed the program so that the selector wouldn’t default to the first item in the list when you went back a screen.

By then I was pretty tired and the meal service was pretty much done, so while the beverage cart was out for a second time, I went to the toilet before crashing.

In that short span of a couple of minutes, the trays were cleared, shades lowered and cabin lights dimmed. All just under an hour after takeoff. Jet Airways, learn something.

And I was amazed. While almost every single passenger still had their IFE screen on, the cabin was almost totally dark! I have never seen such a sight on a flight (or anywhere). The below pics are of the cabin, with the flash off. And even with all of the IFE screens on, here’s the effect:

I didn’t want to be woken up for breakfast, but knowing bawa would eat I asked him to take a pic of his meal:

After a solid 6+ hours of sleep in the extremely confortable seats, we landed in Zurich.

II. Kloten Airport
Zürich is a breeze to connect at compared to most places, but I'm not a fan of inter-terminal trains. I'd rather connect at a place where there's one big terminal (Schiphol) or it’s a quick walk between terminals (Roissy).

Besides my dislike for inter-terminal trains, what’s up with the one at ZRH? I swear it felt like we should have traversed the whole damn country in the time it took to get from arrival gates to the main terminal. And the train ride is such a stereotype, with sounds of mooing cows and Alpine horns and visuals of Heidi yodelling her way down the slopes.

Since our next flight was basically domestic (Schengen) we had to do the passport thing at ZRH. Here’s another gripe: no premium lines for immigration. Not cool. Took 20 minutes to get through, and I had to sit down half way and I was nearly dead by the end. Not cool. Swissair learn something!

We had a couple of hours before our flight to Lyons, so we headed to the very nice Swiss Business lounge, where I first took a shower and then promptly fell asleep. I presume Bawa ate some more, but I didn’t dare ask.

III. Zürich-Lyons
We were bussed (ugh!) from the gate to an F-100 operated by Helvetic Air that would be our ride for the short hop over to LYS. By now, I was starving, so I happily accepted the continental breakfast they had. Not bad for a short flight:

I also browsed through the newspapers, to find this:

Maybe the editor spent too much time with ToI / MidDay people?

To be continued…
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Spiderguy252 · Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 9:25 pm Post subject: Re: Swiss Business to France

CHS · Member Joined: 18 Mar 2010 Posts: 311

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

...another fantastic TR from you, in your inimitable style.
The presentation, humour, and little nuggests of information - superb!
Really looking forward to the rest of it!
Cheers, Sumantra.

jasepl · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 4257 Location: bund-bay

While both are basically fizzy water, typically, sparkling water contains natural carbonation and plain soda is saada pani with carbon dioxide added artificially to produce the bubbles.

The point is, if you want to play in the big league, then don't try and pull such fast ones, especially when dealing with high-paying and discerning customers. The same customers you're trying to woo.

Jet Airways claim to serve sparkling water, but when you ask for it, they fill your glass from an ordinary Kinley bottle (which is bad enough to start, and then those cheap plastic bottles don't even work very well, so the soda is usually half flat).

I've encountered it myself. And had others say the same thing. Wherever in the world it might be more or less popular, sparkling water has long been de riguer across the board.

And Sumantra, thanks. I should have the next part done fairly soon.
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Nimish · Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 10:20 pm Post subject:

Congrats on becoming an Uncle - hope that the naming ceremony worked out (in terms of the timing!)...

The *A lounge at BOM is quite a miserable/ tiny place, they should seriously look to expand it or send the "spillover" to some other shared lounge.

Glad you liked the new LX hardware and the "software" as well. I flew on the earlier hardware, which was sub-par, but the "software" was great - though the outbound left a bit to be desired, the return sector (day light) was brilliant!
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sri_bom · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 2365 Location: Singapore

Fantastic TR.

Good to know that Swiss product is world class. Some time back they too were in bankruptcy before being bought over by the Lufthansa group.

stealthpilot · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 2325 Location: BLR, DXB

Very nice thanks!
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jasepl · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 4257 Location: bund-bay

III. Lyons-Nantes and Nantes-Genève
There were a variety of realistic options to get us to Nantes: The TGV, Air France from Lyons, SleezyJet from Lyons or Geneva. The Transavia / Airpost types also fly to Nantes, but I was going to stay away from them. I would have preferred the train, but there are no direct options from Grenoble to Nantes, and one must connect in Lyon or Paris, which made the whole thing not worth the bother. So we decided we would just fly.

Air France were pretty good at confirming in advance the days on which their flights were operating, and turns out the date I needed to get to Nantes was safe, so that's what we flew. It was a typical, uneventful domestic AF job on a 319, so I won't bother with much more on that.

On the date we needed to return, AF said they couldn't assure normal operations, so we had to stoop to SleezyJet levels. While the typical flight itself is perfectly fine (what do you really need on an hour-long flight?), I have a problem with the endless lines and standing and waiting and walking that they make you do. Even if you pay for priority boarding, you still need get there early to be amongst the first to queue up and make a run to the plane to get a chance at decent seats.

Fortunately, once we told the nice Polish girl at check-in that all that standing and waiting would be a problem, she made sure that the gate was told to allow us to board first. God bless small airports!

It was my first time on EasyJet, and once on board, you could hardly tell you were on an LCC, besides the BoB. Not my pic (and no, she wasn't on my flight!):

Another short, typically uneventful 320 flight across the country. The only thing of note was one of the English captain's announcements. Once airborne, the captain gave us a quick update on the flight, in French and English. Usual stuff, such as routing, cruising speed and altitude etc. Then, he added: "I believe there's a big gang of teenage girls on the plane, and I assume they didn't understand a word of what I just said. So, just for you girls, we're gonna go, like, really really high. And we're gonna fly, like, really really fast. And we'll be there before you can decide if the sexy steward with the hot arse is gay or straight." After a few seconds of disbelief at what we heard, half the passengers burst out laughing. The other half looked around puzzled (must have been the Froggies!).

IV. Geneva-Zürich-Bombay
We were originally scheduled to take a horribly early flight (there ought to be a law) from Lyons to Zürich, in order to connect to the Bombay flight. But I ended up catching a nasty infection a couple of days before the flight and was in no state to travel, so we called Swiss and had them push our flights back by a couple of days. In the meantime, Bawa flew BA from LYS to LHR as scheduled. EasyJet do fly direct from Grenoble to London, but only in ski season, which was still a couple of months away.

The day before our new departure, I still felt like death, and thought about delaying the return some more, But then I decided that I just wanted to get home, so I should just try to get through the ordeal. What we decided to do was to fly out that evening, stay the night in Zürich and then fly home the next day as planned. The LYS-ZRH flights were sold out in Business (and Swiss were happy to make all kinds of date / routing changes for us, but they wouldn't let us fly economy on the 45-minute flight!), so we ended up having to go out of Geneva.

Anyway, we made it to ZRH and stayed the night at the Radisson Bleu which is more or less within the airport.

Swiss have the usual range of check-in options (web, mobile, airport etc) and you can also send your boarding pass to your phone, eliminating the need for paper completely. We, of course, did the boring old airport check-in. Here too, there are a couple of options: Kiosk or Counter. And they have both these options all over the airport, including in the railway station/shopping complex across the street from the terminal, so those arriving by public transport don't need to lug their bags all over the place. Get off the train, up the escalator and hand over your bags. Very convenient.

If you use the kiosks, you can do the usual stuff like change seats and flights, as well as print your baggage tags and attach them yourself. It doesn't always work as well as it sounds, because I saw someone print his own boarding pass and baggage tag, attach the tag to his bag and take it to the drop-off. Turns out he was flying in business, and so the counter agent had to remove the tag, print a new one and attach it with a priority tag. So the whole thing was basically a waste.

Anyway, there were about a dozen Business check-in desks open, and we were done in under two minutes. Jet Airways, learn something.

Once done, we decided to just head towards the gate and find the lounge. Turns out the layout at ZRH is a bit strange: First you do a “boarding pass check", then you get on the bloody train again (again with the moos and yodelling) to get to your terminal, then immigration, followed by security before you can get to the departure concourse.

Security had a separate premium line, so that helped, But immigration didn't and took bloody forever. It seems the Swiss officials were examining all passports carefully, including European passports. Usually EU/Schengen citizens barely slow down as they wave their passport past the officials and walk through. Weird. And the non-Europeans weren't spared special treatment either. Passports were being checked for entry stamps, so that the duration of the stay could be calculated. There were people in each line who didn't have an entry stamp, and so were asked to wait on one side until some other immigration official took them away to a back room somewhere. I bet these people entered the Schengen zone through CDG or some other French airport, and, as usual, Froggie couldn't be bothered to stamp the passport because he had better things to do (ie: shrug and stare).

Most of Swiss' long haul flights depart from the “E" gates, whilst most of the shops, lounges and other facilities are around the “A" and “B" gates. There's no Swiss lounge either at the “E" gates (I only saw signs for an Emirates lounge) and the whole area is rather spartan. A couple of shops and that's it. And that is quite inconvenient, because I had an awful headache and retarded as I am, I had packed my meds in my hold bag, so I went to the convenience store to buy some. Turns out Swiss law only allows registered chemists (Apothek) to sell any kind of drug and the only one was all the way at the A/B gates. Oh well.

I'm a big observer of demographics on the plane. Overall, about half the crowd seemd to be desi (based on the departure circus), with the rest basically Eurotrash and very few Ameritrash. I also counted a surprisingly large number of Jewish men – over 20 of them, almost all orthodox avec kippa, with a handful of the Sephardic variety too.

Boarding was surprisingly well-mannered, considering it was an India-bound flight! What was interesting was that once on the bridge, First went left and Business/economy went right. I've never seen this before (usually it is F/J on the left and Y on the right):

The boarding music Swiss chose was “Kiss Me" - very odd choice, albeit pleasant. Once on the plane, all business seats were taken, and only 6 of 40 passengers were desi. First class though, was the reverse: with all but one First seat gone, there were 6 desis and the token whitey. Economy looked chock-a-block, and seemed to be majority desi.

The usual departure procedure and preparation ensued. Coats were taken, beverages offered, safety demo shown, English, German, French, Italian and Hindi announcements made and we were about ready to push back about 5 minutes ahead of schedule.

Amenity kits were handed also out. Different bag, similar sparse contents:

After takeoff came the menus. Nice big menus, on thick stock, impressive quality printing. In several languages too, and it only listed the offering for the Switzerland – India leg. Compare that with premium menus on a carrier -that-shall-remain-unnamed, where it is a small menu, in one language, with both inbound and outbound printed
on either side of the same flimsy paper. Carrier-that-shall-remain-unnamed, learn something!

They took down main course preferences during taxi. At first it seemed they were just flitting from passenger to passenger, but I later realised that they follow a different order of precedence (more on that later).

They did a drinks run first; by this time I was happily reclined in my seat and halfway to passing out. A nice thing is that the tray table doesn't need to be moved or touched at all, even if you have your seat fully reclined. The angles all work out:

The drinks run completed, it was time for lunch and tables were set.

Lunch:

Code:

Poached salmon with basil coulis and artichokes
Chana chaat masala
***
Seasonal salad with balsamic
***
Lamb masala, basmati rice with caraway seeds, mixed dal
Chicken breast with artichoke and pea lasagne verdi
Pan-fried cod, red coconut curry, jasmine rice with black sesame seeds, sugar-snap peas
Mushroom and pumpkin ragoût, spelt spätzle, Brussels sprouts
***
Swiss cheese selection with pear bread
***
Limoncello crème with biscotti
Fresh fruit salad
Kheer-type thing with apricots
***
Beverages

I still felt like crap and wasn't that hungry, so I asked the FA to just give me the tray with the salmon appetiser. I suppose he felt bad for me, so a few minutes after he brought out my tray, he came back with the cold chana chaat too.

After the meals were cleared, they did another drinks round and shades were lowered. It was the same dismal IFE selection as on the outbound, and I was tired anyway, so I decided to just sleep. However,
To go with the movies:

Code:

Mövenpick ice-cream

I slept pretty well and when I woke up, we were pretty close to Bombay. Mum was passed out and had to be woken up at the last minute. The effects of too much Bordeaux!

At this time, they were doing yet another drinks round, before serving the pre-arrival snack (which I didn't eat):

Pre-arrival naasta

Code:

A selection of delicious snacks

Turned out to be samosas, potato salad, chicken nuggets, steamed beans (farasbee) and pork.

For the first time in recent memory, we did not have to hold over BOM. Must be because of LX's early arrival time (or just luck). We touched down just after 9 pm and after a long taxi were at the gate. Immigration was absolutely deserted, as was baggage claim; LX was the only flight with passengers in the hall or baggage on the belt.

Something I noticed for the first time was that LX deliver their frequent flyers' baggage first, before that of First / Business passengers. Is this a routine thing? Across Star Alliance? I've never encountered it before. And I've decided I'm not a fan.

Anyway, after waiting for all of the oh-so-important Senators and Hons and DYKWIAs to get their bags, ours showed up. It wasn't too long of a wait really, but one must crib.

The X-ray machines weren't working because of some power problem, so the customswalla just told us to walk out.

To be concluded…
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Spiderguy252 · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 3:35 pm Post subject:

Nimish · Posted: Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:01 pm Post subject:

I don't think there's a method to the priority bags - only *G (HON or SEN or *G) get the "priority" tag, and the business/ first guys get the same priority tag from what I've seen. Hence the tags itself are pretty much the same whether you're priority due to FFP or class of flight.

Great report BTW - hopefully you recovered after a bit of the Mumbai air and water Wink

?
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