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ameya · Last edited by ameya on Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

My work in BLR starts tomorrow very early in the morning and then takes me to BOM from where I will come to PNQ.

To ensure that I don't have to get up very early and head to the airport, I stayed at Hotel Shreyas Residency on the highway near Yelahanka. Not a smart choice though. The rooms are just about livable with lot of mosquitoes and the quality of everything is shoddy.

Ate at the restaurant and they proudly wrote " We do not add color to the food". I suppose they should have also said " We do not add TASTE to the food"

None the less, matter of one evening and I shouldn't be cribbing to much about this. I can utilize this time to start another TR and enjoy what I doing - writing !

Trip Planning
As I got onto selecting the flight, I figured out that I would be done with my work around 0830hours. Safely I can take any flight after 0945hours, since my work was right next to the airport, so there hardly was any time to be factored in for transit.

As I started looking at the flights, I was surprised to see this weird routing being thrown up by cleartrip, even when I select Non Stop Only

AI mess by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

This is totally crazy. None the less, my realistic options were as below,

Options by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

A 1015 on SG, 1020 on 6E or a 1130 on 9W.

The 6E rotation was simple and old. They opened the JAI night halt base with this rotation.

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

...and how does a nice Ameya report, get so many hits, but not a single reply? Let me have the honour. The interspersed wit was expected - I liked the `colour/taste' part. The details of the rotations were delicious - come on, please do not think this will bore anyone on this forum. This adds both colour, as well as taste to your lovely reports!
Cheers, Sumantra.

ameya · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:43 am Post subject:

Bangalore Airport

The airport at Bangalore is coming up nicely. I still think it will be saturated as boom starts and hopefully soon. The current design has never been liked by me from an operational perspective, you lose out on two bays when a widebody docks at the aero bridge. What I know from my sources is that this also hampers slot co-ordination since during the day, majority part of the airport terminal is given to domestic and thus cannot handle 2 wide bodies at the same time.

None the less, post my work, I reached the airport around 0900hrs, met up some of my ex-collegues and friends at the ALpha 1 building, which is the office of BIAL and headed to the terminal.

The FIDS showed all flights on time except for Spicejet. Again a good decision to avoid Spicejet.

I entered in quickly and IndiGo was being allocated counters from 1 to 8 with a long queue. I had the printout of my boarding pass with me but I still decided to try the kiosk, which said my check-in is already done and I need to proceed to the counter if I need a duplicate boarding pass.

I headed up to the security which was in chaos, as usual. BIAL needs to seriously get on with CISF and do something about this. I will not start about BLR security one more time, like I do in all my dep. ex-BLR.

As I went to the hold area, I got hold of some newspapers and took some Idli-wada, since I did not have breakfast.

The time then was 0935hrs and the Dreamliner had already docked to gate1, from where it would operate AI505 to DEL at 1030hrs.

Since I cannot carry the idli wada near the gates, I decided to sit in front of the next best thing, FIDS. Again except SG B737s and Qs, everything else was on time.

As I was about to finish off my breakfast, the status on FIDS changed from Security to Boarding in front og 6E 452 - Mumbai. Well the aircraft arrives at 0940, how can it board at 0945 !

Quickly lines were formed in front of Gate 7 and the initial impression was that the lines are not long. The boarding staff took a lot of time to board and as my turn came got firing from their bosses for slow boarding. Apart from shouting on each other, the two ladies and 1 gentlemen boarding the flight did nothing.

The bus quickly took is to VT-IFH which had arrived early from HYD/JAI. The boarding was quick and I settled on my seat 4F. The boarding was over quickly at 1000hrs

Another bus and boarding was complete at 1005hrs. Pretty empty flight and probably the emptiest IndiGo flight I have seen so far. Most of the middle seats in the front section were empty. We were chocks off at 1010hours and started taxing towards rwy 27, turning at taxiway B and taking off from there using just the remainder of the runway.

As we turned there, I remembered something which an Airforce officer had once told me. Caution this is adult material.

" There are three things useless in this world,
the B**bs of a nun, b**ls of a priest and the runway behind you"

We stabilized at 36k feet amongst clouds and the service promptly started. Since the pax count was less, everybody was serviced. I settled for a can of coke.

Flight was uneventful and we did some turns and twists when I figured out we were closer to BOM and in a loop. The pilot came on PA and announced we would hold for 10 more mins and hope to land by 1140, well 20 mins before schedule. We eventually did at 1145 on a very cloudy and little rainy Mumbai.

We docked at T1C as I was expecting. Most of the 6E metro flights are now docked at T1C. Since I did not have any luggage I quickly came out, did a pre paid and headed to Parel where work was waiting for me.

I am adding the pics separately.

Incidently I saw VT-IGW which came in to BLR operating a direct flight from CCU.

ameya · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:04 am Post subject:

20130613_101645 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

The Dreamliner, Still a dream for me.

20130613_101612 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr
ATR & Q

VT-IGW, came in from CCU

20130613_100932 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130613_100156 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

My sharklet

20130613_095947 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130613_095936 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130613_095915 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

Sharklet, but the old seat and tray unlike my PNQ-DEL flight

20130613_095856 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

My own IndiGo

20130613_214635 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

Nimish · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:46 pm Post subject:

Lovely TR - thanks for posting! Need to make sure others don't subject themselves to the Hotel Shreyas near YNK! There's a lack of good hotels (both luxury and budget) near the airport right now, hopefully things will get better in time.

I saw the 787 at the same gate on arrival at BIAL a few days ago - definitely felt a pang of regret at not having a chance to fly them as yet...
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We miss you Nalini!

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

Yes, Ameya - I will agree with Nimish here. It is nice that you also send up-to-date trip reports, with accurate information about things around. I enjoyed the intricate details, as well as the photographs. The limitations of the BIAL are worrisome - I did not know about this. the consortium that designed it, and the GVK that run it - it is bad that they let this design flaw continue well into operation. As it is, re-carpeting happened sooner than needed, the expansion also came quite soon - from my armchair perspective, things look amiss, but then, I do not know the whole story. The BIAL security is a bit strange yes, a colleague has had a verbal altercation with them once. The low loads are a bit unlike most 6E flights - was this an off-day? I enjoyed your Air Force officer friend's remark Razz

Nice pictures, especially the sharklet one. Good that you caught the Aerologic 77F: I have one of the first pictures of the German-registered 777 when one such bird had landed in Delhi a few years back, and our plane was right in front of it. Are you an aero-models collector, Sir? Would it be possible to give us a sneak peak into your collection? A prominent Delhi Spotter has a collection that would rival very few.
Cheers, Sumantra.

ameya · Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 12:53 pm Post subject:

@Nimish – Thanks. The hotel scene in BLR is indeed bad when it comes to area from Hebbel to BIAL. Hopefully things would improve. The airport hotel as and when it comes would not be budget I suppose.

@Sumantra – Sir, Thanks again ! As for limitations of BIAL, I hope when the under construction part is joint with the existing part, things would improve. From what my ex collegues and friends who work with BIAL say, the problem lies in the management philosophy. A lot of people at the top lack refuse to look at how things could be done the other way round.
A good example of that could be the website. I said I would put in details of flights which I am expected to see the next day, but I dint. The reason is that BIAL website shows flights only +/- 12 hours and thus I could not check the details. Rival that with DIAL & GHIAL where you can see an entire day in advance. Surely points out to GVK v/s GMR.

Another request for anybody taking off from BLR next is to try and get a seat on right side if you are taking off from rwy 27 and left if from 09, and check if they have started patch work of the runway yet again. To have re carpeting done in 2012 and seeing patches all across again was a shock to me. If that is so, a lot of heads should roll at BIAL and L&T.
I am not a big collector, but on and off, have only 20 odd planes, but all scale models, mostly 1:400

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

Oops: GVK vs GMR! `Only' 20 models? Lovely, Sir!

ameya · Posted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 1:09 pm Post subject:

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

Spiderguy252 · Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 12:31 am Post subject:

Good TR ameya.

Good looking model at the end there too.
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Yeah.

jbalonso777 · Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 9:59 am Post subject:

Nice TR again sir.
I liked the little bits of humour in between, obviously the food complaint and three useless things taking the spotlight!

Strange that BLR security is still in a woeful stage.

My last IndiGo flight (CCU-BOM) had almost every middle seat empty.

Looking forward to more.

Regards
Jish
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http://www.youtube.com/c/JishnuBasu777

Phldel · Member Joined: 21 Dec 2006 Posts: 10 Location: HYD

ameya

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

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

Thanks for the TR.
Good old BLR looks the same. Is the terminal work on the eastern side close to done?