Airliners-India.com

[Spiderguy252]

Another TR, let's do this.



Before the Flight:

*When you are stuck in Kuwait in the summer months, you need to escape!



*After my hectic Egypt trip a couple of weeks back I was ready to get back to India, and decided to book a flight to BOM.

*I'd probably done this route 5100 times before and I didn't want to fly KU again on this sector.

*9W came up as an option and a cheaper one at that (KWD 57/-) and I booked it a week in advance.



Airline: Jet Airways
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800
Registration: VT-JGU
First flight date: 9th February, 2007

Load in J: 30%
Load in Y: 60%

Scheduled Departure Time: 9:10 PM
Actual Departure Time: 9:35 PM
Scheduled Arrival Time: 3:25 AM
Actual Arrival Time: 3:45 AM

Flight Time: 3 hours, 45 minutes


*Ride to the airport.



*The 360 Degrees Mall.



*Finding a parking space at KWI at peak hours like this can be difficult.



Check-In:

*9W uses Zone 4 in KWI to check-in it's pax.

*Luckily for me, even though I had arrived only an hour before departure (8:00PM), the queue was light and I was able to reach the agent within 5 minutes of my entry into the zone.



*The agent didn't speak at all, just handed me my boarding card and soon I was on my way out.

*Just paused to click a couple of pics at that point as I realized that I had to make a TR.

*KU's passenger handling OAL services.



*TG's office next to it.



*In front of which a typical Indian labour pax was trying to carry everything including his kitchen sink back home. Right now he's been apprehended for excess baggage and is trying to stuff something into a few bags. What exactly is going on? He only knows.



*MS was the other airline checking in pax in the zone for it's flight to CAI. Never take this flight. Amen.



Immigration:

*Picked up some dinner at the Food Court before immigration.



*Departures Board. Lots of KUs to India.



*Funny to see that the GCC citizens' line was longer than the Other Nationalities line.





Boarding:

*Once past immigration, I walked straight to Gate #3 where my flight would be boarding.

*The time was 8:25PM so the gate had not opened yet. I passed Gate #1 and #2, MS was departing from the latter. At Gate #1 though, I saw something interesting.

*Gate #1 had transformed into an exclusive Gate for J9.





*Opposite #1 there was the Amiri Diwan where the Sheikh "rests" before beginning his flight.



*Boarding had commenced for 9W's flight but I still didn't enter the gate because I didn't want to get trapped in the midst of hardcore ILBST.

*I just sat outside and took this shot of pax boarding Ariana's flight to Kabul. All of them look the same and there were no ladies/children boarding the flight, apparently!



*At 8:45 PM, I entered the gate. The 9W staff looked at the boarding card and crossed out the seat number and assigned a new one. Apparently I had been upgraded to J.

*Most pax had already boarded the flight and so I wasn't forced to wait in a queue or anything.

*Anyway, I sat down and browsed the Internet for a while, waiting for the last few passengers to board.

*Out popped a message from Rishul, saying that the aircraft reg I would be flying was VT-JBK. I craned out of the window, saw that the bird was in the old colours, and made out the reg to be "VT-JGU". Quickly sent a reply before boarding the aircraft.

*Blurred Aerobridge shot.



*2 female 9W FAs were at the door and one of them had a passenger manifest. I was warmly welcomed on-board and directed to my seat.

*I kept both my bag and laptop case under my seat and didn't stow anything in the overhead bin. Good thing too because my seat mate who turned up a few minutes later turned out to be a keyboardist and he brought a super large keyboard on board which could barely fit.

*The seat was very comfortable and though it wasn't lie flat it was sufficient for this 4 hout flight. The leather was soft and you sink into the seat as you sit down. However, the seat in front of me seemed in bad shape and the base was held together with scotch tape.



*View outside the window: a TK 738 to IST, which had replaced the MS 77E.



Flight:

*The J cabin was quite empty. Only 6 seats were filled. And the Y cabin which I peeked at later in the flight was not too full either. I wonder why this is the case, since they are pricing this flight quite cheaply. LoL at the guys who prefer KU/IC over 9W!

*The FAs came with a drink service and I took a glass of orange juice. They also distributed headsets, blankets, newspapers and a cold towel. The entire process was mechanical and hardly a word was spoken.

*We began pushback at 9:35PM, around half an hour past scheduled departure time. No info provided on why we were delayed.

*I could make out a KU 772 behind the TK 738.



*NAS Aviation service as we taxied to the runway.



*We were second in line for take-off, behind the Ariana A300.



*She was in turn holding short waiting for something to land. That something turned out to be......

*A KU AB6 seconds away from touchdown.



*After the runway was clear we began our short take-off roll (thanks to the light loads I suppose) and were up in no time.

*KWI's passenger terminal seconds after lift-off.



*Leaving the coastline.



*Shortly after the seatbelt sign was switched off I pulled out my touchscreen IFE screen and began exploring the various options available. Jetscreen!





*IFE controls.



*The FA at that point came to me and my seatmate and asked if we would like to have dinner. Both of us refused and saved it for later.

*The Airshow.



*Soon after, I began watching 'The Village'. Cabin lights were dimmed and the few passengers who had finished dinner were dozing off in their seats.



*Just as we were flying over Oman, I requested dinner. It was butter chicken with jeera rice and raitha. However, the chicken was quite hard and the raitha was surprisingly warm. Not a very edible meal.

*Crew came around serving ice creams. I opted for strawberry. The other option was Vanilla.

*I started playing some music and dozed off too. The seat was really comfy.



*Interesting point to note- no in-flight mags in any of the J seats. Only the safety card.

*Flight was uneventful for most of the way. FAs kept attending to a rather demanding arab up front. Still no smiles.

*Hit turbulence an hour from BOM which woke the cabin up. It was still dark outside. The FAs came around giving the imigration forms and did another drink service.

*Captain announced approach to BOM and asked us to fasten our seatbelts.

*Seatmate's IFE system had crashed and I could make out the Linux logo above the BSOD. A bad pretentious variable in the Kernel, apparently. I never knew Jet's IFE was coded in Linux!

*Typical bumpy BOM approach; touched down on 27 and taxied to the International terminal where we parked next to another 9W 738.





*Captain thanked us for flying 9W. Purser came around giving comment cards.

*As we were leaving the aircraft, the FAs seemed rather tired but did smile and wave goodbye.

*Arab was connecting to BKK. A looong transit for him. A few other pax, I noticed were rounded up past the aerobridge as they were connecting to places. (International or Domestic I'm not sure)

Conclusion:

Nothing much to write home about this flight. The catering was pretty bad, else everything held up. the crew could have done with a few smiles though. Brownie points from my side because I got upgraded to J.

Scores:

Punctuality: 9/10
Seat: 10/10
Catering: 5/10
Aircraft Condition: 6/10
Entertainment: 9/10

Total: 39/50 = 78% = Four stars out of Five.


Thanks for reading. Sorry for these short/blunt TRs; I never seem to get the time these days. And sorry about the pics this time around. They were pretty bad, I know.

Varun
_________________
Yeah.

[iflytb20]

You are losing your touch spidey
You are posting more TRs than your trademark PRs these days

[Spiderguy252]

[avbuff]

Nice TR.

55 degrees tell me about it, Qatar was equally terrible and the heat wave forced the construction work to cease for 2-3 days.

[justbala]

Good TR. Wud hv been juicier, if meal pics were included

[Spiderguy252]

[avbuff]

[Spiderguy252]

[me111993]

Nice CTR (Crisp TR ) Varun!

[Spiderguy252]