Airliners-India.com

malQ · Last edited by malQ on Wed May 09, 2007 9:55 am; edited 1 time in total

On the 3rd, I was looking at heading for Pune from Delhi on Monday the 7th evening, had some work during the day, and the choices on departures were Jet Airways/1645, Air Sahara/1930 and Kingfisher/2115, in that order, for evening departures. Go Air having abdicated the late night slot, I was looking at Kingfisher, when Spicejet came up on the screen with an even later departure and an interesting price. Rs 3224/- would get me there with a 2235 departure ex-DEL, which was fabulous, not just the cost in these days of high prices on the DEL-PNQ route. But also the joy of having an early dinner with the SOH at home in Delhi, driving and chatting with the son to the airport, catching up on reading on board, pelting through Pune with only the call-centre taxi lunatics as risks, and then getting into bed alone at home in Pune by 1am or so. I didn't even bother to check the rest.

In addition, I thought that loads would be low, and one would spread out. Three seats in Economy is good, the only thing better is four. As things turned out, the flight was almost totally full, my guess is that there were about 165 people on board. This is the Pune sector, lately, to and from Delhi. Running high. Next day, a friend got in touch, and was talking about heading for Pune on Monday evening too. I asked him to fly with me, and by the time he bought his ticket on the 4th, it was 1100/- rupees costlier. When I checked on 7th afternoon, Jet and Kingfisher were at rack rates (above 12000/- rupees) and SpiceJet was at 9000/- rupees.

The Spicejet website is as good, fast and easy to use as the Indigo website, both offer the option of pre-selecting seats before paying for the ticket. However, I do find the website security to be better and more pro-active at http://www.spicejet.com, and they have some smart moves up their sleeves to catch the bad guys. Which is good. And which is why I shall not mention them here. Just be aware that if your credit card is being misused by somebody else, then the best chances of your coming to know very early shall be if the crooks bought a SpiceJet ticket. To go on and on, I think Spicejet has most of the angles covered. Good show.

Left home at 2115, landed up at DEL1-B in 20 minutes from DefCol, and hung around outside the departure terminal, it has become an extension of India Gate. Safe place for budding lovers to hang out and grab a coffee or ice-cream, or even a decent meal at Balaji, and absolutely brilliant in ambience now. There are still enough departures listed for late night, mainly Air Deccan and Spicejet, but there was also the usual fuss going on surrounding a GoAir flight headed for Mumbai, and delayed by a few hours, with people doing a song-and-dance about food. A flight is 2 hours delayed, and people make a fuss about food, on an LCC?

In through security, x-ray, very brisk check-in. Here again, I am a fan of the systems that enable the SpiceJet counter staff to process things very quickly, plenty of bar code readers and high-speed printers. We had pre-blocked 27A and 27C, and asked the check-in person to try to please keep 27-B empty for us. He did. Walked through second security, observed that the Nirulas counter was deserted, thought about grabbing an ice-cream but resisted the tempation. Bought a bottle of water instead. Sold at printed MRP, no ripping off.

Boarding was announced 40 minutes before scheduled departure, and doors were shut 15 minutes before that, at 2220. We were rolling by 2225, and then we were up by 2235. I misjudged the take-off direction, and found myself sitting on the wrong side, because the A-380 was on the starboard side as we took off Easterly on 10. There were a lot of mosquitoes giving us company, and even the loud roar of the engines as the plane climbed rapidly through a clear night to 40000 feet did not scare them away. SpiceJet needs to buy insect repellant. VT-SPM is a new winglet Boeing 737-800, and the aircraft was almost antiseptically clean inside when we boarded. More than anything else, the aircon was working wonderfully.

Grabbed a few decent photos and a few really bad ones, night camera work is not a speciality on the point-and-shoot I use. You can check them out on http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm2827/ or on the airliners-india pool on this group itself. I don't want to load these pages with images for people who come here on dial-ups. But I might place urls with the trip reports, if suggested?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm2827/488898484/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vm2827/488898458/

I have done over 40 flights on Spicejet since they came online. Barring one incident involving a stupid pilot who chose to use the intercom to announce his views on ATCs and then did other stupid things which messed with my safety as a passenger, I can state that this is one streamlined airline with efficiencies in place, and there is not much going wrong on board. Almost as good as Indigo on that count, who go a wee bit better, and also use the larger Airbus 320s.

Grabbed 8 biscuits and three bottles of water from the tray (free, there is none of this selling stuff here) and took my food photos. The biscuits are very tasty indeed, mildly spicey in sweet, yummy. And then chatted, read, napped.

About half an hour before scheduled arrival, the pilot came back with the information that there was congestion at Pune, and we might face a delay. Turns out there was a delayed Kingfisher to somewhere, a delayed Air Indiai from Dubai, and the usual late night overnighters and all of 4 bays to handle them. In addition, a few non-scheduled operators carrying their customers back into Pune.

We got a guided tour over Pune for almost half-an-hour, and then finally landed at 0050hrs. Usual huddle of people trying to disembark before others. Got hold of my bags, made PC with some people, into the taxi, and home by 0120.

the_380 · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject:

Great TR as usual !!!!
A380 pics were fantastic...
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Nimish · Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject:

Great report - I'm amazed by the amount you have to travel - DEL-PNQ almost seems like a local train or an auto ride in your life Smile

I have immense respect for the folks at Spicejet - they've kept things simple and very very well organized. And they're consistently going full or at high load factors. And their website, seat selection, ticketing etc. - all get full marks.

avbuff · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 5031

nice TR

spicejet is is a real consistent player and a classy LCC

HAWK21M

Firstly Fantastic Detailed TR.

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

Nice TR, once again we're hearing good things about Spice Jet.
Can't wait fly them.
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sri_bom · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 2365 Location: Singapore

Nice TR as usual....

Sri_Bom

malQ · Posted: Wed May 09, 2007 4:22 pm Post subject:

Thank you all. To respond:-

a) Yes, 27B was kept empty, which was nice of them. I would think there were about 10-12 empty seats on the airplane.

b) This was a direct non-stop DEL-PNQ so there was no transit halt as such, unless you mean when the aircraft came from the previous sector.

c) Well, any details - I will have to open the SpiceJet website and check my flight log, but mostly DEL-PNQ-DEL, with a few on DEL-BLR-DEL and PNQ-BLR-PNQ, especially during the opening days when their fares were low. Now they are often higher than the "full service" carriers on the DEL-PNQ-DEL route anyways. As I said, their product, before airport, at airport and on aircraft, is very standardised and efficient. The few times I have had to run change in dates have been very easy. Offhand, I can not recall a delay except maybe during the fog days once.

d) I do commute DEL-PNQ a fair bit, and have been doing so weekly for the past 7.5 years now. I would think that airline evaluation is something i can now do from the pax point of view, especially since I have worked in the intermodal industry and can understand the limitations.

On SpiceJet - would I use them? Let me put it this way - on date, for my regular travel within India, they are along with Indigo the two best products in the market for the bread-and-butter economy class passenger. I observe the increasing number of business travellers on these two airlines despite their middle of day schedules to/from Pune, though both Indigo and SpiceJet are trying to bring in early morning and latelate night flights too on this route.

Things may change, Indian may bounce back, Jet may get out of its so-called upper end product fixation and Kingfisher may recall that beer is a mass product on which its fortune and name was built. Till then, if these two airlines can keep notching up their fleet and stay clear of zero cost ticket gimmicks, wonderful.

Now all we need is some sort of frequent flyer reward from them.

HAWK21M · Posted: Sat May 12, 2007 9:24 pm Post subject:

Spicejet & its low profile & gradual expansion is def a winner till date.
regds
MEL
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