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me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

Hello all!
Writing a TR after almost an year, hope you like it, and yeah, I’ve tried to make it a bit shorter than my previous report, which, I accept was painfully long! Wink

Also, I’ve tried to be as non-biased as possible (u all read the thread title Razz

), so do feel free to criticize! Wink

Background :
I gave my 12th boards this March (long painful and torturous), which were succeeded by a bunch of entrance exams (engineering) and blah blah, what followed was a call from a university in Chennai, and that on a very short notice, so, on the morning of the 9th of may was the day when it was confirmed that we had to leave on the 10th, a short trip was fixed, a morning flight outbound from AMD, and an early morning inbound flight to AMD on the 11th because I had another exam in the afternoon.
There were 2 options for the outbound flight, one being an SG direct flight departing at 0550, which was the first choice and the second being a 9W flight via MUMBAI, the SG flight was the obvious choice because it got me to Chennai at 0800 (no specific appointment time, but as always the earlier the better!) but by the time the news was confirmed, that flight was all blocked out so, 9W 338 was chosen.
For the inbound flight, we only had 1 choice which was a 6E flight departing at 0525 and arriving AMD at 0835 via HYD.
Fare for the 9W flight was Rs 7135/- and fare for the inbound flight was Rs 6915/-.

• # 9W 338
• A/C : VT-JNX 9.3 years old.
• STD : 0705
• ATD: 0755
• STA: 1035
• ATA: 1200
• Loads AMD-BOM: 100%
• Loads BOM-MAA: 97%

To The Airport-Security
7 am flight would usually mean 6 am reporting at the airport, 530 am leaving my place…waking up at 430 Sad

But yeah, I was excited as hell, the impact of grade 12 had been such that this was my first flight in almost an year!

One day trip, so that was all the luggage I had, my dad was accompanying me, on the outbound trip, then he later went on to BLR the next day morning, so we did have a bag to check in.
Left home on schedule, half way, we get a text message from 9W that the flight was delayed by 50 minutes, and the new departure time was 0755..I checked on jet’s mobile website about the arrival time in Chennai, and it was 1200. The message from Jet was pretty useless as we’d already left home, but they can still be excused because it’s only an hour long flight from BOM, and this was the first flight of the rotation of the aircraft so any delay couldn’t have been known earlier. Be that as it may, not a very good start.
At the airport, we used the Premiere’ Check-in counter, even though this was an 8/162 configured a/c, the lines on the 2 premiere’ counters were pretty long, lots of JP platinum members here!
Check-in still took about 15 mins, 10 of whom were consumed by the bloke who was busy making small talk with the check-in agent, discussing seats and delays and what-not…the conversation initiated by the passenger not the agent. As usual, a smiling lady checked us in, allotted us seats at 24-A/B, apologized for the delay and gave us a lounge card.

6E Check-in counters were busy as usual.

The Lounge is on the first level, land-side but with a decent enough runway view. Handful of options for the lounge card holders, I went in for the cheese sandwich while my father ordered poha and sweet lime juice to go along with it, the sandwich was horrible, it was practically a cheese slice between 2 slices of bread which was thrown into the grill and came out all burnt…the poha wasn’t all bad, not very good either. I couldn’t really eat my sandwich, not even finish a piece of it, the juice was good though.

The lounge.

We left the lounge by 650 or so, our boarding cards read the boarding time to be 0725, security was fast! 5 mins flat! And there were quite a few departures!

Boarding – Inflight

Once airside, there was an announcement that the flight would depart from gate 2 on the first floor, so upstairs we went!

VT-SCW heading to BOM.
A few more announcements from 9W’s side apologizing for the delay…

Finally VT-JNX came in operating 9W 2001.
Boarding was announced almost immediately after the arrival, passengers seated from rows 15-3// were requested to board first, and while we were in the line our board cards were checked just to make sure we were in the stipulated rows.

We were kept waiting for a bit till we were cleared to board.

Juliet-November-X-Ray (jairam-Naresh-X-ray…ehh…iflytb20 Wink

) waiting to take us to BOM/MAA.

The aircraft was spotless clean!
Seats were the new rexine seats, these will soon be on all 9W aircrafts, it’s being done as a common fleet interior programme.

Once onboard, I had pretty much nothing to do but take pictures! Those ‘LMN’ cartons of lemon juice were distributed by the crew.

Pushback was at 0752, exact…still 47 mins late.

VT-EMP, VT-ADW and VT-JNX…all oldie-goldies of the full service carriers…as opposed to 6E, who send in brand new planes to AMD all the time!

EK A330-200, I think it was A6-EAI, not sure though, strangely enough, the arrival time of EK 540 here in 0825, it was just touching 0800, and this plane was just parked, no ground service, no attached aero-bridge…maybe the 4 am flight went tech or something.

Take-off was a usual boeing one, fast and powerful! Heavy condensation on the wings though.

Water shortage in Gujarat is a problem which is non-existent here, thanks to our champion CM, Narendra Modi!

Seat-belt signs were turned off in about 10 mins or so, there was absolutely no announcement from the flight deck. The crew sprung into action from then on…flying time to BOM was only 50 mins.

Meals were distributed by a fairly cheerful looking crew, only 1 option, that a vegetarian one, which consisted of Sabudana and rawa idli with sambhar , along with a fruit bowl and hot-tea or coffee.

The sabudana was below average, was a tad cold too, the idli on the other hand was delicious! My meal was succeeded by tea (I now officially hate coffee, it reminds me all those sleepless nights that I spent studying :-/)
My father sitting beside me and his neighbor, both had the fruits and coffee, when I asked why, he said they’ll serve the same stuff on the next leg and he’ll have breakfast then.
Decent started soon enough…rest of the flight was eventless, little turbulence on the decent though.

Spoiler action!

Nice way to generate some additional revenue!

Finals

Touchdown!

We landed by 0905, docked into a gate within a matter of minutes.

We docked into gate A-5 in terminal 1-C. Looked very impressive from the outside.

Passengers connecting on other flights! 32 of them heading to LHR on 9W 118 alone!

Another oldie! 23 years and going strong!

The Seat :: Pretty Cramped! The seat pitch and width were atleast 1 inch less than the one on my konnect flight last year! Old aircraft, maybe that’s why..

Mr Baldguy here wrecked my cabin shot (taken during the halt at BOM) :-/

Pushback for the second leg was at around 0950 or so. This time there was a change in crew, and orange and watermelon juices were distributed in glasses. I took the OJ.

This time the secondary runway was in use. And the cockpit crew did come on the PA, gave usual flight details.

The new S2 c/s!

We were airborne by 1015, the new T2 looks beautiful!
The crew on this flight were distinctly better, overall, nothing specific can be pointed out, this also would have had something to do with the fact that this was a longer flight, so lesser pressure on the crew to finish off services quickly.
Meals were served with a question varying from passenger to passenger…pretty nice…a little like “hi, what would u like for breakfast..i’v got some sabudana and idlis or some masala egg?” I denied both she still gave me a bottle of water , as you read there was a non-veg option too on this flight. My father took the vegetarian meal and it was the same, ofcourse, but it also had a bun with butter and jam packs.
Rest of the flight was pretty eventless.
The Captain came on the PA just before our decent started and told us that we were cruising at 34000 feet, at mach 0.75 (very slow for a 737, isn’t it?)…we should be starting our decent shortly and………sorry for the delay and thank you for choosing Jet today.
Decent-Arrival
Decent was again eventless…no turbulence what so ever, we circled a bit over the BOB and landed on runway // at about 1150.

The marina beach is soo long!

There was also a KLM Cargo 744F!

VT-JBE had operated the MAA-KUL-MAA.

We were at the gate by 1155, parked beside VT-JBE.

People do like working under jet don’t they! Wink

Luggage was out in about 10 mins or so and we proceeded outside.

Verdict:
Well, an eventless domestic flight equates as a good one and apart from the delay everything was okay, the meals could’ve been a shade better though, seat could’ve had a bit more pitch..and blah blah…the thing is I am myself able to reason out why the above mentioned was not so…there’s no point in cribbing about it. The only thing is that this particular aircraft will operate 2 more mainline 9W BOM-MAA-BOM legs which should not be the case, inter metro flights should be operated my proper mainline fleet with IFE/better seats and so on.
I will stick by the fact that the crew, meal, service on the whole, on the second leg were better than the ones on the first flight.

Will post a TR on the return leg soon, thanks for reading, hope you liked the pics.
Rishul.
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Causal Determinism : We are hardwired to need answers. The Caveman who heard a rustle in the bushes and checked out to see what it was, lived longer than the guy, who assumed it was just a breeze.

- Greg House

Spiderguy252 · Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 6:29 pm Post subject:

Brilliant!

Didn't appear to be the best of flights though. Good of you to catch the first AI A321- VT-PPA at BOM.
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Yeah.

shivendrashukla · Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 7:25 pm Post subject:

Nice TR!!

Cheers
Shivendra

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

Thanks Varun and Shivendra. Smile

_________________
Causal Determinism : We are hardwired to need answers. The Caveman who heard a rustle in the bushes and checked out to see what it was, lived longer than the guy, who assumed it was just a breeze.

- Greg House

Nimish · Posted: Wed May 18, 2011 11:19 pm Post subject:

Super TR and great pics to accompany it! Hope your exam at MAA went off well Wink

.

Coming to 9W's domestic product - the tight seat pitch is really the worst of it. I presume these a/c did not have any IFE?

Why were the LHR pax on the ground at BOM - don't they go through the regular gate/ terminal and so on?

For a premium "full service" airline - I wish they would make flying a little more comfortable/ enjoyable Smile

.
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We miss you Nalini!

GuyFromBOM · Member Joined: 19 Jun 2010 Posts: 544 Location: VABB

Nice TR, Rishul. Smile

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The more I fly 9W, the more I prefer AI | FlightDiary: 59 Boeing + 30 Airbus + 9 ATR + 1 Embraer

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

Thanks Nimish and Hiren.

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

Very detailed and enjoyable TR, Rishul. The stark contrast between the old-style AMD domestic terminal, and the new international terminal (from the outside), is quite apparent. Which runway did you land on at BOM? The MAA approach over Marina is a really beautiful one. The `under Jet' was a nice pun! I also hope the examination went off well, and look forward to a TR for the return leg. I flew Jet after quite some time a few weeks back DEL-BHO-DEL, and will possibly post a TR on this after clearing my backlog. This also had the new rexine seats, and being an old bird, had no IFE.
Cheers, Sumantra.

sm777 · Member Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 7 Location: BOM

Good, looks like you had an enjoyable set of flights overall. The next time you do a TR, I would suggest you focus a bit more on the flying experience in pictures and avoid wasting pictures on Airport interiors unless it's something worth talking about. My humble opinion! Cool

As you know, I fly 9W 95% of the time, I have not seen much deviation from SOP or things like maintenance of interiors / food etc. What has improved though is OTP, which was quite an issue a couple of years ago with 9W.

I flew BOM-DEL-BOM on JGC/JGD, both old birds, was in 02A/03F, the Premiere service was impeccable with the new fancy gold rosenthal crockery and new menu's too, with a focus on the "drool appeal" of the food too. Lunch on 9W352 yesterday was excellent, a continental chicken dish followed by a lovely chocolate souffle and 3 glasses of apple juice!

Of course one does miss the IFE sometimes but on a short flight it's not so much of an issue, if you are lucky to be on an IFE-enabled 738 on a domestic flight, it's streets ahead of what IT and AI offer with their non-AVOD boring fare.

ANyway, well done again RS and hope you can do many more flights and many more TR's soon!

Cheers
SM

ps : couldnt help notice a line of praise for N. Modi, what's with you guys from Gujarat, lots of hero worship here! LOL

himmat01 · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 1392 Location: DEL

Nice TR, Rishul. Loved the pictures. Sad to see VT-ESM being scrapped.
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Save Maharashtra!

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

Himmatji, thanks a lot! Smile

avbuff · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 5031

Very nice TR!

So is the brand new terminal being used by international carriers? this particular terminal does have shades of "AAI infrastructure" still!

A routine 9W experience I suppose on your flight.

Thanks for sharing.

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

Thanks a lot Ojas. Smile

sri_bom · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 2365 Location: Singapore

Nice report and lots picture as well, thanks for writing.

On the glass panels at AMD aiport in your photos I see they have stuck/painted round red/green stickers. What exactly does this signify, I have seen this previously at the old Bombay terminal as well as other airports in India.

Does it mean those with red color stick glass panels cannot be opened? If that it is the case it is pretty useless piece of information.

Sri_Bom

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

thanks a lot @sri_bom

abhijith16 · Posted: Mon May 23, 2011 6:02 pm Post subject:

Nice TR! Are the new Rexine seats a little tight?

Seeing your TR makes me wanna write my TR soon.. I'm flying to BOM on 17th Jul on EY/9W.. I just wish time went a lttle faster!

me111993 · Member Joined: 04 Sep 2009 Posts: 3225 Location: MAA/AMD

thanks Abhijith