Airliners-India.com

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

Continued..... CUN-SAL on LACSA
Nice screen for a short hop + usb charger + cup holder.

Snack/dinner time!
They had ham and cheese sandwiches + a little tomato and cheese salad type thing which was nice. Drinks run included.

They had the seats where the bottom moves forward slightly when the seat reclines.

Was surprised to see her in El Salvador .... sorry for the horrible picture.
and yea was surprised to see the 343 as well Laughing

Spent basically a night ... next morning heading out to Houston Intercontinental

(El Sanvador) SAL-IAH (Houston) on TACA (TA)
SAL as expected is a smalish airport, a drive away from town. Their main airline .....

Smallish airport but still had lots of shops and places to eat. Why cant we learn in India? BLR has all of 4 places to eat and not much better at the other cities.

Not our aircraft, a 321 waiting to board

Our ride to IAH

Embraer parked next door

Went thru the normal security check and xrays ... and right before the 'holding area' you had the secondary checks for the US bound flights. No Xray this time but they opened up all the bags and looked under your chappals and stuff.

Like the last one this was another comfortable flight, no PTVs this time but i think they had drop down screens hmmm cant remember.

Breakfast was quite yum, dunno what it was. A cross between a quiche and an omelette, with sausage + the usual fruit and bread. They had a tea/coffee drinks service after.

IAH

Now the headache started. We landed at around 1330 and had planned to take the Emirates flight to DXB at 1840. EK212 was a 77W- my wife and I (and a fwe more chaps) had standby tickets and unfortunately didn't get on.
I wont tell you how many seats the plane left unfilled, but it was a lot. You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you anyway. I was quite surprised, firstly at the amount of pax it took/left behind and secondly it was an eastbound. I don't even want to know how restricted the 777 is on for a westbound departure in DXB summer Shocked

Anyway thats the price to pay for a ULR on a 77W, its a superb aircraft but cant do these missions that's why EK is pushing for the 77x and 350s.

So what to do, I had to be back for work in 3 days so didnt want to try the next day. Loads were the same but the airline prefers cargo over freebie pax- cant blame them so didnt want to risk trying the next day or day after.

Qatar to the rescue. QR had a flight leaving a few hours later, a 77L. The helpful EK staff did a quick check and made a few calls and found out QR had seats available for DOH. QR (we were informed) has a freighter to IAH so their 777s are not as passenger restricted.
We booked subload tickets and rushed to the gate, only problem with subload is no business class so economy it was on a 14 hour flight. Didnt matter tho at least we were going home.

Qatar 078 IAH-DOH was scheduled for 2015, got to the gate and were informed of a delay.

After an hour they brought some drinks and chips

After another hour they got back to us and said there was a problem- they were working on it but had no clue what the problem was. Well OK they said the engineers "hadn't yet identified the issue" but same thing.
A while later they said they identified the problem but were looking for the part.

At 2300 they made another announcement, they got the part from United (i think) but it would take an hour to install it + another hour to make sure everything is OK.
We were looking at a post 0100 departure. I was worried about the crew duty time. People got very agitated as you can imagine a 2015 departure by now it was 4 hours later. QR claimed all the restaurants in the terminal closed so they couldn't give out meal vouchers. Probably was true, at night the terminal was dead. Eventually they called the caterers and got a bunch of sandwiches/drinks/fruits so we had to do with that.

Here she is at midnight.
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77701671@N07/8609715642
/]

[/url]

At around 0115 finally good news, boarding to start soon!! I was expecting the flight to be cancelled but we were soon to be on our way.

We boarded and at 02 something left IAH bound for Doha. It was a long day for us, early morning from El Salvador and over 12 hours in Houston airport....

Wife and I got the second last row, but had 3 seats for the 2 of us.
Weirdly enough the armrests wouldn't go up at all so there went our plan of stretching out and sleeping. A colleague of mine sat 10 rows in front and he said his armrest went up 45 degrees not the whole way ...... not very nice on a long flight.

No printed menus for economy, but had them on the screens which i think is better

Wasn't very accurate tho, food was good. Desert was a bit blah but there was lots of food so I was happy. Most people just passed out coz of the late departure.

Before landing = breakfast. Was a little strange eating breakfast at midnight, original schedule had us land at 2000 I think I cant remember.

The food was good, I flew Qatar DOH-JFK a few years ago in economy and liked it as well.

Tea/coffee

All in all an OK flight. 6 hours delayed + no meal vouchers but I assume that's not their fault with the restaurants closing. The food was good, service was ok nothing exceptional but I was happy. Perfectly fine for a ULR heck im sure the crew were more pooped than the pax.

Landed in DOH parked next to this gorgeous thing, wish I flew her!! I wasn't particularly impressed with 777 for those 24 hours as you can imagine hehehehe.

DOH transit, nothing much to say.

Last quick flight back home!!!
EK858 DOH-DXB a332 in Y.

The biggest complaint with EK (and rightly so IMO) are the 330s IFE. Sure they were ground breaking when they came out, but hasn't been updated and compared to the 380s and newer 777 the passengers always wonder what the heck is going on.

Breakfast on a very quick flight. Thank god for the crew loads were light, its basically an hour to do breakfast = coffee/tea service.
The white thing on the top right was yoghurt with a muesli impersonator of some sort.

Planned to get back in the evening instead got back 12 hours later.

Hope you liked it...
_________________
eP007

Nimish · Posted: Tue Apr 02, 2013 8:52 pm Post subject:

Lovely coincidence Nikhil - I had 2 colleague on the same QR flight that day (who missed their BLR connection), and 3 on the EK flight that same day (who reported a full flight, no empty seats Very Happy

)!
_________________
We miss you Nalini!

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

Nimish · Posted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 6:31 am Post subject:

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

- The TACA experience looks quite nice, whether it was your PTV-equipped 320, or the 321 without them. Anything but tacky!
- Your QR experience also sounds nice. The cold drinks part in IAH reminds me of an Air India experience at FRA, where a 744 (`Ajanta') went tech, and though it was back in action in about an hour, Air India had cold drinks for a 744 load of passengers. This was in 2007.
- Thanks for the pictures of the food. It is nice that I read this report just before going home from office. You can well imagine what happened to me, and worse still, to the snacks The Wife had thought she had hidden from me.
Cheers, Sumantra.

Spiderguy252 · Posted: Fri Apr 05, 2013 12:16 am Post subject:

Been following all parts, very exotic place to go, Mexico. Thanks for sharing. Smile

_________________
Yeah.

VictorKilo · Member Joined: 18 Feb 2007 Posts: 252 Location: USA

Great NRSA TR....Mehico looks great. When i was at CAL...they posted daily memos about flying out of HKG to EWR on CO. "DO NOT ATTEMPT"..daily weight restricted.They suggested hoping on anybody else to NRT or the super long way home via GUM,HNL,IAH... Shocked

. I had to fly HKG-DEL-EWR ..just to get back home..

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

Uxmal - the ancient city was built and abandoned 3 times due to lack of rain.

It was steeper than it looked ..

Lunch stop ...

IK-IL sinkhole.
Never swam in a sinkhole, was amazing fun!! Water was very cold tho...

To set the mood I guess...

Chichén Itzá
This pyramid was built sometime between 800-1200 AD (I forget...)
Easily recognizable, we went in the morning for the site tour when there was no crowd.

This side is not yet renovated, they are still looking for all the stones.

We returned in the evening, twice a year during the spring/autumn equinox the sun forms a shadow of a snake on the side of the pyramid. Good timing for us Very Happy

You can see 2 snakes head at the bottom left of the pyramid.

That zig-zaggy formation with the sunlight is the snakes body

Panorama pic with the crowd ... good ol iphone.

Cancun ....

_________________
eP007

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

Thanks VictorKilo and Spiderguy252
_________________
eP007

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

Stealthpilot, some of these architectural sites are a traveller's dream. I had first read about the Yucatan peninsula and Chichen Itza as a a little boy in a British Airways magazine (Fleetwings: The magazine of the Junior Jet Club). While the name seemed funny- I ended up writing it as `chicken' each time, the article had made me gasp with wonder. I still get the goosebumps on seeing the place in the `Ancient Aliens' serial. The sink-hole was quite interesting! Thanks once again for sharing these memories with us.
Cheers, Sumantra.

avbuff · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 5031

Lovely TR ... thoroughly enjoyed the pictures!!!