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Nimish

IndiPo to Bangalore

Background/ Reason for trip
I had to head to HYD for a meeting, and the company I was meeting was going to sponsor my tickets. I could choose any airline/ timing that I wanted. I chose 6E essentially due to the convenient flight timings, and due to the fact that my BIL was already ticketed to fly BLR-HYD the same evening as I was, so we could fly together to HYD. Though the sponsoring organization does not normally fly their employees on 6E, the folks were able to get an exception and have me ticketed there. I received the eTicket along with the "corporate meal voucher" information via email a day before travel.

6E's online site was superb, I was able to enter the PNR details, retrieve my booking, change seats etc. I did an OLCI a day before the flights, and that worked quickly and smoothly as well. This helped me get the seats I wanted (window as it's a short flight), and seat myself and my BIL on the same row (with some poor sucker in the middle).

My tickets were:
Going Out - Bangalore to Hyderabad
Flight Date From To Departs Arrives
6E 152 15May12 Bangalore Hyderabad 7:15 PM 8:25 PM

Coming Back - Hyderabad to Bangalore
Flight Date From To Departs Arrives
6E 453 18May12 Hyderabad Bangalore 11:35 AM 12:40 PM
Total price Rs. 9130. Quite a lot for the short sector IMO, but these were ticketed just a day before departure.

Outbound flight
Getting from BLR-HYD is not the focus of this report, as I was traveling with my BIL on that flight, and hence did not take pictures/ notes etc. However, that flight was 100% full (at least seemed like it), on time, and full of business travelers in suits and exchanging notes on their day in BLR. Definitely very impressive, not my sense of the type of pax on 6E.

Stay in HYD
HYD itself was horrible (weather wise) - hot and hotter. Luckily it was just a 3 day trip, and a couple of biryani and beers later, it was time to head home. I had a cab pick me up and take me to the airport.

Return sector
The approach road to the HYD airport is like passing through a green oasis, the roads exiting off the highway is beautifully landscaped all the way to the terminal. Kind of reminded me of the greenery and trees seen while driving to the KLIA airport. Surprisingly there were a lot of "traditional trees" along the way (as opposed to decorative palms), which indicate that this area must have either been forested earlier, or the "right" trees were planted right at the start of the project, as they looked quite mature by now.

The drive up the ramp to the departures offers you a great view of the tarmac where there seemed to be gates for ATRs. The novotel hotel is visible just off the terminal, and must have a decent view of the flight operations from the rooms facing the runway. Has anyone here had a chance to stay in one of those rooms?

View of the terminal and the ATR parking area

The terminal entry was on the upper level (much better than BLR IMO), and was quite empty at that time of the morning (around 10:15 am). The huge departure area and the long lines of trolleys are visible in this shot:

Traffic management was good at the departure driveway - cars were being directed to park on both the left and the right of the driveway. Something I've seen only rarely was the "bank" of trolleys conveniently arranged for pax to pick up as they get off their ground transport. Great effort from the HYD team.

Walking towards the terminal entry, the sense of spaciousness is highlighted by the double height ceiling - above the arrivals part on the ground floor

Unlike most other airports in India where there are multiple entry points, HYD seemed to have only 2 operational entry points (with one guard each). Perhaps there are others opened up during peak hours? Due to this, the queues at the 2 entry points had about 10 folks each, but it cleared reasonably fast. The guard was quite chatty (pleasantly so), and wondered on looking at my photo if it was actually me. I told him "dekh lijiye" and he grinned and handed back my DL and boarding pass to me.

View to the left after I entered the terminal. Straight ahead is the security check.

View to the right. This is where the rows of check in counters are. The first row was AI, and I presume 6E was somewhere beyond.

Once I entered, I was not sure if I needed to get my self-printed boarding pass "stamped" by the airline staff, and the 6E checkin counters were not the ones visible as soon as I entered. As I paused to look around, I spotted a "suited" airport employee standing just there, perhaps to assist passengers. I asked him about the "stamping" requirements, and he told me that was not needed, and to directly approach the security check counters.

The security check counters were empty and straight ahead from where I entered the terminal. The security chap wanted to check my ID again (good) as it was not authenticated by the airline staff. There was no queue at all for the XRay machines, and my bags were out before I was. One thing I find consistently in India these days is that the LAG rules (liquids) are not enforced any more. I had my whole toiletry kit (including liquids noticably bigger than 100 ml) with me, and it was just waved through. Good for us! International travelers - has the rest of the world eased up as well?

Post security check, you see a big sign telling you about what you can do at the airport. I thought this was a nice feature.

There's a very nice looking shopping area, not too large, but sufficiently equipped to meet most travelers needs. Once past the shopping areas, I could see all the boarding gates and signs pointing me to 25D. However as I had enough time, I strolled over the boarding gate immediately in front of me, which was empty, and had a great view of the tarmac. I caught a couple of pictures of the EK A343 leaving and the SV 772 parked.

This gate was last used by 9W, and it was sad to see that the staff had left the terminal unlocked and had not logged out before leaving it deserted (this can be a big security loophole). Can anyone help interpret what's shown on the Sabre screen here? Perhaps I could have checked myself in for a future flight and printed a valid boarding pass as well Wink

?

Anyway, I hung out there for a few minutes taking these pictures of the soon to be extinct A343 from EK, and the much-in-use-worldwide 772 from SV.

Random shot of the tarmac

Standing at the gate, I noticed the Plaza premium lounge just below, and decided to check it out. Luckily they provide complimentary access to "premium" mastercard holders, and my Citi Platinum MC let me through. The lounge was deserted (as was the airport), and I picked up some fruits and a cup of tea (sad to see there was no earl grey tea) and sat down and started typing this TR. I was checking online for the arrival of the flight from Raipur, and finally got up only after the flight had landed. The lounge itself was comfortable, but nothing extravagant. There was a paid bar in the lounge, and a pint of beer was a reasonable Rs. 140 or so (no, I did not indulge Smile

).

Some pictures from the lounge

Comfortable seating with separate semi-private areas for groups to gather in:

Food counter, don't remember what it was now, but probably some idli/ sambhar and scrambled eggs type of thing. There was fruit juice and cut fruits on the side. As it was not yet lunch time, all the food was breakfasty.

A random 6E arrival

The SV 772 taxiing, and a landing SG 737 barely visible in the background

After exiting the lounge, I headed up to the departures area, and clicked a random pic of the tarmac

My gate was a bus gate, so I had to head down via the escalators. As uninteresting as they are, I still clicked a picture, and hence including it here Smile

Interesting that the advert shown above is of Gujarat Tourism!

Reached the boarding gate to find the queue rather small. So either a bulk of the boarding was complete, or this was going to be a light flight. I checked with the ground staff, and she assured me it's a full flight. Specific questions on the actual load vs. boarding at HYD met with a single answer "66" - which could mean anything. I guessed it meant the number of pax boarding at HYD to go to BLR.

The crew did not wait for the bus to get jam packed, and let the bus go as it was just getting full.
Video of the bus journey

We reached our parked plane (could not catch the registration) a few minutes later. The tarmac was HYD was quite deserted, I guess symptomatic of the time of the day.

Our plane:

Since I was using my mobile phone camera (and discreetly), there were no cops running to pull me up.

I was seated towards the front of the plane, and I quickly got to my seat and settled down. Here are some views of the boarding process from my seat:

Pretty soon, boarding was complete, and I was surprised to find the loads as being very low on this flight (I'd say around 60%). I was lucky that my entire row was almost deserted (only the window seats occupied). Here's a view of my row after boarding was complete!

The standard safety demo followed:

We pushed back slightly early at 11:33. The cabin announcements covered the captains, crew, and the languages spoken. From what I could note down quickly, the names were: Capt Sushant Patri, FO Dinesh vaid, and the crew were 4 punjabi ladies (with last names of arora, bhatia, chopra etc.) from Delhi. What I did not understand was why they announced only Hindi/ English as the languages spoken, why not Punjabi as well (I assume Punjabi girls from Delhi can speak Punjabi...)?

We had a longish taxi to the start of Runway 27, here are some random pictures:

A view of the tarmac

The taxiway

Probably a RET?

I then switched to video mode, to capture the take off roll. This is all from my cell phone camera with the phone in Airplane mode.
Reaching threshold of Runway 27 in HYD

There was a slight pause, and then we moved onto the active and started our departure at around 11:43 am. 9 minutes from push back to roll.
Ready and rolling - Video. Roll starts at 00:27 into the video

I love the take off and landing parts of flights, especially the turbulence you often experience as you take off and gain both speed and altitude. This was a light plane, so it took off pretty fast. We were soon leveling off and the it was time for the service to start. Seat belt signs went off at 11:50. However in flight service started only about 10 minutes later.

As this was a corporate ticket, I had the meal included in the fare. The web instructions say you must keep the little tear off meal vouchers handy, but in practice, it was not needed on either sector. The crew had the list of "corporate meals" printed out, and were going over the names and ticking them off one at a time.

Here's a picture of a river we crossed about 20 minutes after take off. Any idea which one?

Soon it was time for the meal service, so I took a long hard look at the menu card. I also kept my boarding pass handy to prove that I'm the valid recipient of the meal marked for 2F.

Picture of my boarding pass and the menu card

The lady came by, reeling off the whole "Thanks for being part of the corporate program etc." spiel, and asked for my food choice. I asked for a "Panjab De Paranthe NV" with a Diet Pepsi, which was immediately dug out and handed over.

I was not hungry, so I just kept both for the long journey home from the airport. Of course, when I later looked at the box, I was given a vegetarian meal, which I did not notice when it was handed out Sad

.

One of the biggest advantages of being relatively short (5'6") is that the leg room is always decent Smile

. That was the case here as well -

The service was rushed as always. Even with the low loads on board, the crew probably did not get to reach a lot of the pax. Hopefully they at least reached all the pre-paid customers on board! I was nervous that they would miss my row, but thankfully they made it. I wish they would start the service run as soon as the seat belt sign goes off, and go through it much faster. Perhaps doing away with cash will help? Move to prepaid vouchers bought on the ground plus credit/ debit cards on board? And certainly reduce the offerings on the menu, just keep the most popular 2 Veg and 2 NV items. Perhaps a suggestion to the 6E team is in order - will try and find their feedback page.

Some timing stats that I captured:
12:07 pm FO announces on PA: Currently about 180 km towards NNE of BLR and @31K feet. Start descent in next couple of mins, expected touchdown at 12;35, clear weather, visibility of 21 kms and 31C in BLR. Hope you enjoyed your flight with 6E etc.
12:08 pm - started slowdown/ descent
12:14 pm - turning east/ left
12:17 pm - garbage run
12:18 pm - seat belt/ electronic sign turn on + FA announcement
12:24 pm - turn right and "crew to your seats for landing"
12:27 pm - thud noise - gear down?
12:29 pm - touch down.
12:32 pm - park
12:35 pm - door open
12:42 pm - at terminal
12:43 pm - out of terminal and meeting my friend Smile

The approach to BLR in the day time is quite pretty - not much of industry, just kms of farm land in colourful patches. The soil is also a much more of a red color than elsewhere in India, and you can see a few scattered hills dotting the land side. Some of this was captured in this video:

Video of the approach towards Bangalore, a few minutes before touchdown

I decided to take a long video starting from the final approach to the parking. So here it is - about 4 or 5 minutes long...
Video of the landing, taxi and parking at BLR. Touchdown at 00:36 into the video and exit from active at 01:20

It took the normal (quick) time for the ladder (it's not really a ladder, what exactly is this 6E contraption called?) to be attached, and soon we were rolling down the contraption onto our waiting buses. For some reason, they waited for all the buses to be full before the "fleet" left for the terminal. As I had no check in baggage, I was out of the terminal in no time. Luckily I was meeting a friend after ages at the airport, and caught up with him before heading to the bus terminal for a Volvo into town.

Getting down form the a/c:

Finally have the registration

Folks still getting down

Taken from the bus, there was a huuuuge crane working to erect the new "roof/ scaffolding/ structure" thing that's being tagged onto the current terminal.

Are we in Riyadh? SV a/c everywhere Smile

. Though luckily this is a 332 - definitely prefer these to the 772 Smile

Another view of the 332

Summary
My outbound was a different league - it felt like a super busy premium flight - 100% full, all business travelers etc. The return was much more "typical" - empty seats, family crowd, fat lalas with gold chains etc. 6E was superb on both sectors, on time, no fuss. The only area of improvement is the speed of service on board. The crew was polished, friendly, but rushed. The ground staff was decent, luckily did not have to meet the 6E ground staff either at BLR or HYD - except for at the boarding gate. The food was decent, nothing to write home about. The packaging of the outbound meal (I need to hunt down that pic) was outstanding - the "Spicy masala kulcha" was packed in a large matchbox shaped box to drill home the spicy quotient!

Would I fly 6E again, or would I recommend them to others - yes - definitely, and highly recommended.

I hope you enjoyed this mega-long-TR-with-too-many-pictures Smile

. It took me a couple of weeks to get the energy to put all of this down, and this would have been impossible had it not been for a bulk having been typed out in the lounge, courtesty of Mastercard. Hence the title - For everything else, there's Mastercard Smile

...
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We miss you Nalini!

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:26 pm Post subject:

Great TR .

Some questions.
1. Your outbound flight goes onwards to JAI and was til recently 6Es only connection to JAI from BLR, till they launched the non stop flight. Any idea on the loads who were going onwards

2. Similary on the return leg, the rotation is DEL-RPR-HYD-BLR so any idea on the RPR-BLR load

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The sabre screen you were referring was describing the baggage, connecting pax and their status of wheel chair/normal and so on. Helps to prepare the Load & Trim sheet - rough in advance

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

A superb trip report, Nimish, and that too, after a very long time. It looks like the wait was well worth it. The title is a nice take on Indigo's then ad at MAA, `Indipo to Thiruvananthapuram', as pointed out by member justbala and seconded by Yours Truly (ahem...a bit of self-show-off from me, as usual!)
http://airlinersindia.s4.bizhat.com/airlinersindia-post-101950.html
though you did a Ponga as well as a Vanga Smile

The mastercard part of it was lovely - their most popular line in a series of superb ads on the visual medium.
Thanks for a rather wholesome trip report - no, please - no trip report can ever be too long, or have too many pictures, or videos! I enjoyed every word of it, and the pictures and videos, too. From BIAL with BIL - nice! HYD is really a very nice airport (though I haven't been there very recently, you have really noticed the little things that often make a difference - the baggage carts, the summary of facilities, and the like. 6E really looks nice (apart from the slow service part that some others have also pointed out), it is nice to see them do well. More so, at a time when the entire industry is bleeding badly. Thanks a lot for taking the time out to write this detailed report and sharing it with us!
Cheers, Sumantra.

aeroblogger · Posted: Wed Jun 20, 2012 10:35 pm Post subject:

Very nice report...

Maybe I'll be inspired by this enough to post a report of AI 617 tomorrow. Now I have a good idea of what kinds of pictures I need to take for a good report Smile

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

Firstly, cheers for noticing (and writing about) all of the trivial details (languages, not logging off, conveniences, demographics, etc) !

I agree about Hyderabad airport. For the purpose it serves, it is near perfection in terms of size, design and operations.

Also, flying HYD-BOM a couple of months ago, I showed the guard my itinerary on my phone and he let me through without any problem at all. I had a printout, but it was easier to get to the phone than to rummage through my bag to look for the paper.

Nimish · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:18 pm Post subject:

Guys - thanks for your feedback and comments! And Rohit - definitely try and blog your experience on your AI flight with focus on the ground handling (how's AI doing there now).

ameya · Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:34 pm Post subject:

yes, and to not let him down, SQstarted scoot... so that he can compare himself to some SQ product

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The reason I asked this thru load is, 6E after launching BLR-LKO, BLR-JAI , would look at launching BBI and RPR from BLR.

Hypothesis based in how they first build via flights, stabilize and grow non stop. BLR-HYD-BBI has been there for a long long time and after IT exiting the market, there is demand for a direct flight.

BLR-RPR is a little far fetched, but BLR-RPR-DEL will complete their morning RPR-DEL product

Thanks for the info

Spiderguy252 · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:11 pm Post subject:

Great TR. HYD is a fantastic terminal, possibly the best in India after T3.

Hardly ever flown IndiGo, but they seem like the best of the lot in the Indian domestic scene. I suppose the only gripe was the incorrect corporate meal service provided, albeit that's quite a large malfunction from your perspective I'm sure.
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Yeah.

Nimish · Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:59 pm Post subject:

PAL@YWG · Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 12:12 am Post subject:

Great TR, Nimish and great quality pictures!
Your pictures do really bring the best out of HYD airport.
My experience with 6E was always good, I haven't read any TR yet that says someone had a bad experience with 6E.
Thanks for sharing.
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jasepl · Member Joined: 26 Jul 2008 Posts: 4257 Location: bund-bay