IT is a great airline. I am not sure if you've seen the Optiontown deals, where you can generally fly that route for about a 3000 INR ($65 upgrade), its usually a good deal. I fly the DEL/BOM/DEL route quite a bit, and I know that the 830 am DEL/BOM usually doesn't have a Kingfisher First, unless they have changed in the past month or so. Not sure which return that plane does, or if it heads elsewhere, but the optiontown wouldn't work there.

In case you don't know about Optiontown, its www.optiontown.com, where you essentially pay to be put in line for an upgrade (no extra miles if you get the upgrade, just at original paid fare class), and if you don't get the upgrade, you get a full refund. Its pretty nice, since the Indian airlines are pretty stingy with their upgrades for FFers.

As far as security checks though, I live over in India/Asia for much of the year and I have to say, flying through Delhi on a Monday morning commuter flight to Mumbai is way easier than trying to get through security at Newark at 8 am! Its rare to have more than a 5 minute wait, because they have so many security checkpoints. Most important about security though, is to make sure you get that luggage tag and get it stamped, then make sure it never gets caught up on something and falls off. Nothing worse than having to run back through security when you're already boarding.