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

My cousin Mariette just flew BKK-BOM on the afternoon flight. Here's her quick take on that experience (her words, my translation). Positive input in green, negative in red. My (cheap) comments are in italics.

At BKK check-in there was a bit of an argument between the pax in front of her in the J queue and the agent, because the agent was unable/unwilling to let him use his upgrade vouchers.

Upon boarding, the cabin was immaculate. I suppose Clueless Chopra and her minions were on chutty.

The flight seemed chock-a-block in economy. Almost 50-50 mix of desis returning home and Filipinos (presumably going on to Riyadh and Dubai etc) plus a few other Asians. Apparently they do MNL-BKK-BOM-RUH because it's by far the cheapest option. The "more trash to Bangkok" theory in full bloom.

Economy may have been full, but when they closed the aircraft doors, there were exactly three passengers in the J cabin, including the man from check-in. Which means no more than two revenue passengers. Yet all that drama for the vouchers.

A minute later, six people showed up from Y - bag, baggage and bachhas in tow - and made themselves at home in the Premiere cabin. Voucher drama explains itself : employee friends and family come before passengers, of course!

Menus were handed out : both outbound and inbound selections listed side-by-side. Menus in English only; no Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati let alone Thai or Tagalog

Mariette was the second pax to be asked about her meal choice, and they had already run out of her first and second choice, so she ended up with the South Indian.

The drinks service started. Mari asked for a white wine, to be asked by the FA if she could have the red instead, since they had already opened it. Wow.

Main course portion the size of a leftover, not a full meal.

Very bizarre salad : bowl of red cabbage filled with boiled potatoes and pearls of fresh mozzarella. No flavour, no seasoning, no dressing. Not even salt. The dressing seems to be one of Jet's great cost cuts.

The breadbasket was brought out with the usual selection, but no garlic bread. Not sure if that was part of this meal plan, or it's been done away with completely.

No butter, jam, salt or pepper on the tray. Instead they brought out a basket with all those and you could take what you wanted. Of course, by the time they brought that basket around, the bread was consumed as was most of the little main course. More ways to cut costs (and quality)?

Spectacular dessert : the chocolate mousse cake was outstanding. Though the crew should remove the acetate strip before serving it. Jet do seem to take care of the quality of their desserts. I'm not sure if it's intentional, but no matter how bad everything else is, I've never encountered a bad dessert on Jet.

There was a random pre-recorded Thai announcement in the middle of the flight. It's a start!

Otherwise, a rather competent crew, if a little unenthusiastic. Deflated was the word used.

Landed 20 minutes early at a deserted Sahar. There were only a couple of AI planes and one Indigo plane docked at the boarding bridges. Of course, Jet had to park their plane at a remote stand far away.

Then they tried to stuff the whole plane into one bus.

After exiting the bus, Sahar proved to be even more deserted, to the point that there were no immigration officials in sight. They were all sitting in the office because the airport was dead. But they took their positions quickly.

Baggage delivery was almost instant.

Plane door to terminal exit in 30 minutes flat (22 of those minutes went in the bus, so 8 minutes from bus door to terminal exit).

Overall, a good flight, though cost cuts have gone too far already.
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four years free of jetya punti!

Nimish · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 4:20 pm Post subject:

I did not know that 9W also was into the "friends and family free upgrades for life" business. That is shocking if true!
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We miss you Nalini!

abhijith16 · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 4:52 pm Post subject:

At least your cousin had a good flight with the cost-cuts.. I've made up my mind..
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sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Jason, thanks for yet another innovative presentation! While
`second hand reports' are not new - I guess Nimish did one some
time back, the 6E trip to Singapore, I liked the positive,
negative and comments (cheap - ha ha!) part. The choice of
colours may have suited the default background, but the green
does not come well on the deep blue, which is the default
background on logging in. Jet's IFE seems to have remained
unchanged - that is nice, but the cost-cutting shows a bit badly.
The recession has its bad parts, I guess.
The check-in agent boarding, and bringing his troupe from Economy
to Business class (at the cost of fare-paying passengers being
denied upgrade vouchers) - was too stark. While we have read
about such incidents on Air India, this was perhaps the first
time we have heard of such happenings at Jet. Once even on Air
India, I have heard about non-revenue passengers being politely
denied an upgrade due to a 319 going full in Business - and here
we have an airline, which at one time was perhaps the best Indian
airline going overseas, and represented the best an
Indian airline could offer in the skies, going down in its
standards. This is very sad.
Cheers, Sumantra.

Spiderguy252

Sorry to be a little bit of a dweeb, but I am finding a few things about this report that are a tad thought provoking: Razz

Karan69 · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 1334

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

So, a few days after the flight, Jet sent out an email survey asking about the travel experience. Nice, even if there are, apparently, 80+ questions in said survey. Hopefully they implement at least some of the passenger feedback they get.