Airliners-India.com

aeroblogger · Last edited by aeroblogger on Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:49 am; edited 1 time in total

Note: apologies for the awful photography - using a broken mobile phone's camera...

I was inspired by Nimish's recent trip report to write up one of my own. Since I was flying Air India from Hyderabad to Kolkata yesterday, I figured it would be as good of a time as ever to write up a report. And since I couldn't get to sleep last night, I found the time to write the report without sacrificing valuable vacation time as well.

The greatness of Hyderabad's airport is all taken for granted now that I'm living here. I barely notice the great access roads, the little conveniences which make such a big difference, or the beauty of the terminal anymore.

I arrive at the airport at approximately 9:30, for a 10:35 flight. Having forgotten my printout on the kitchen table, I go over to the AI airport office, where there is no line. I am quickly handed a printout of my itinerary with a smile. And for free. Jet Airways, please take note.

At 9:30, there is very little line for anything. No line for CISF officers checking printouts. No line for check-in desks. No line for security check. I love the airport when it's empty.

Check-in is a quick and painless affair. I hand over my printout. The check-in agent hands over a boarding pass. The best part was when he said, “Welcome to Air India, your palace in the sky.” Not “have a good flight,” the usual Air India line, or the grunt I usually get from SpiceJet agents. This little phrase shows clearly that even with all the tough times AI is going through, he still takes pride in his company. Normally, ground services are my least favorite part of AI. That doesn't apply today it seems.

I wander over to the gate, a bit early. I ask a gate agent standing at the desk what the loads are like.
“Executive Class is completely full, sir.”
“So many non-revs?” I ask in surprise.
“No sir, all 8 tickets are revenue tickets,.”
He gestures at the manifest sitting on the desk. I'm impressed – loads look to be good this flight.
“And what about economy?”
“There are 30 passengers, sir.”
Ouch. The aircraft is an A319 – which seats 108 passengers in Y. 30 passengers in economy is a 28% load factor. Not pretty. Even when you add in the J passengers, the load factor is 32%.
I look forward to getting a row to myself.
“Is it always like this?”
“No sir, usually on Monday and Friday this flight is full. Even for mid-week flight, this is very less passengers – usually there is at least 60 or 70.”
I sure hope he's right. This flight is surely losing lots of money today – if it happens every day, this flight definitely won't last.

It's a fairly routine day at HYD – apart from a lone SpiceJet cancellation, everything is running on time.

At 10:05 sharp, boarding begins. By 10:15, everybody has boarded. On my way down the jetbridge, I catch a picture of the aircraft, VT-SCH. She's a newer A319 in Air India's fleet.

The purser is standing at the entrance of the aircraft greeting passengers with a Namaste. The first thing I notice as I enter the economy cabin is the PTVs at every seat – I'm excited to check out AI's Thales i3000 system.

The cabin is looking nice and clean, but sadly empty.

For some reason, every seat is in a fully reclined position – FAs go through the cabin putting the seats to upright position.

Pushback happens at 10:20, 15 minutes before scheduled departure. Everybody is on board – there is no point in waiting.

The PTVs show a safety video I've never seen before.

I took a video of it as well – if you'd like, I can upload... You can probably find it somewhere on the web...

I look over the Safety card:

The in-flight magazine for this month's cover is Ladakh, an area which is supposed to be very beautiful. I'd love to visit:

Complimentary headphones are provided:

The IFE is incredibly impressive for a 2 hour flight.
There is a moving map:

Recent Hindi movie Jannat 2 (with English Subtitles):

Older Hindi movie, Adalat, also with English subs:

Hollywood picture Independence Day:

Lapataganj – Hai Khabar Garam Unke:

And a channel of Bollywood Music Videos (Mujhko Teri Zaroorat Hai – Jodi Breakers in this picture):

In addition, there are 12 audio channels available with various different programming.

The controls for the IFE is very convenient and intuitive:

After takeoff, the meal is served:

I'm going to miss this like crazy when I go back to the USA in August.

Samosa, Chole, Sandwich, Water, and Jalebi for dessert. Yum.

I polish it all off:

The meal also comes with a coupon booklet:

A nice way to try to go after sales in the air.

Midflight, I notice to my amusement that the seats have inbuilt coat hangers:

They really have thought of everything Very Happy

Flight attendants come through the cabin every 20 minutes offering water bottles to passengers.

As we departed early, we also arrive early. It is almost disappointing to have reached my destination – for the 2 hours that I was in the air, AI was truly my palace in the sky.
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aeroblogger · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 6:01 pm Post subject:

Now that I've finished the trip report, some comments about this flight:
This flight was above average. That wasn't by design – I had planned to make a trip report out of this flight in advance, and AI chose a good time to deliver a great flight.
It was above average in a few ways:

It had the Thales i3000 IFE system, which sadly isn't fleetwide
The flight had a light load. On my usual route (AI 517/518 HYD-PNQ-HYD), I'd be extremely lucky to get a free middle seat next to me, forget my own row.
I didn't have to deal with rude AI/Airport/CISF (security check) employees. HYD is a great facility, but I've dealt with far too many rude and unhelpful employees at the airport. Usually, they aren't AI employees, but it still reflects badly in the flight

Assuming the incredibly low load was normal, AI needs to seriously rethink continuing service on this route. However, maybe the gate agent was right and this was an unusually low load... I trust AI to do their job of route planning – I'll just enjoy my flight Smile

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Nimish · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:50 pm Post subject:

Rohit - can you resize the images to 640 or 800 or 1024 resolution? Right now they're so big that there's a huge horizontal scroll bar on the screen, and I'm not able to read the text as it scrolls to the right!
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rutvij · Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:05 am Post subject:

Rohit, use this Tool for Quick Batch Resizing. Very user friendly.

http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm

aeroblogger · Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:50 am Post subject:

Finally, I was unbanned. I truly hate this Honeypot blacklist.

I have resized images.
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Nimish · Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:53 am Post subject:

Thanks for the resizing Rohit - really appreciated as I could now "enjoy" the TR!

Lovely TR - and sounds like a splendid flight. The loads were horrendous - I sure hope this is not a permanent feature on the flight! The new IFE on AI looks good. I think what caught me most by surprise was the completely fully J cabin - at least the yields on this flight would not have been a complete disaster.

The food looked yummy and very "different". Kudos to AI catering for the imaginative menu choice.
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sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

Rohit, from wonderful and insightful articles, now starts a series (very long, I hope!) of nice trip reports! Thanks for sharing this journey with us - with all the myriad details! Yes, Air India has had the Thales i3000 on all the new planes - the 321s, the four 320s, and the large number of 319s. 5 channels with fairly good content, and close to 12 audio channels, whose content has consistently been good. However, no live TV (which Kingfisher had in its glory days), no AVOD (as in some Jet narrow-bodes, and all wide-bodies of the country's carriers, save the Air India A332s). The food seems to have picked up in quantity again - I had a similar experience on yesterday's AI 764 DEL-CCU flight (what a coincidence, CCU was my destination, too!). Lovely.
Thanks for sharing this with us, and we all hope for many more from you, too!
Cheers, Sumantra.

aeroblogger · Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:54 pm Post subject:

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

Of course it was fantastic, like it always is (even when it isn't).

In reality, it seems like a perfectly uneventful flight; ideal, in my opinion. And it more or less mirrors my recent experiences of flying IC : good, for the purpose it serves.

And I still say IC because, despite the supposed merger, the two remain very different. And whilst I will happily fly IC on short flights by choice, AI longhaul evokes the same reaction in me as it does the majority of the country : over my dead body.

(Of course, AI/IC can afford all of the extras, because, unlike Jet and United, they don't have to worry about profits and sustainability, but that's irrelevant to the passenger experience.)

Oh and I would put less money on "the flight may have been fantastic (sic) because it was empty" and more on "it was empty because AI aren't (perceived to be) fantastic."
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