Seriously. They're brought quality and standards down to a point where it must now be considered an art form. The below is an extract from my description of a Hong Kong-Bombay flight in Y last year (long story, but useless Jet points expiring and they wouldn't let me redeem even one, let alone two seats in J... usual Jet sob story so I ended up in Y).

My recent trip on GOI-BOM was even worse, in terms of crew performance. I didn't think that was possible, but they managed to fall further.


The set of JetChildren working this flight turned out to be even more clueless than usual. Which, honestly, is a monumental achievement, I mean such cluelessness does not come naturally or easily; one must work rather hard to hone it to such an art form.

The Jet crew have now added a new phrase to their vocabulary: "Inflight Executive". As in "I am Clueless Chopra, your Inflight Executive". ... is that?

The crew also went around confirming special meals before takeoff, checking if people had ordered what the manifest said (remember this for later).

After the safety video, the IFE remained on. In that it was on and fully functional before, and remained so during boarding, taxi, takeoff and ascent, which I thought a bit odd, but perhaps it's a change in policy.

The IFE selection seemed to be better than I have found in the past. Or maybe that's just because I found something to keep me entertained for a couple of hours.

They still had some very odd choices indeed:

• Three different Harry Potter movies (Really? Really really?)
• Planet of the Apes
• Captain America
• Episodes 4, 5 and 6 of some in-between season of Big Bang Theory
• Episodes 11 and 12 of Glee

Who selects the programming? What do they smoke whilst doing it?

To begin, it was a long time after takeoff that they started the service. Between napping and watching the movie, I hadn't initially realised how much time had passed until I looked back and saw the first signs of a trolley, which went past us towards the front of the cabin, where it was joined by another trolley from the forward galley.

Clueless Chopra and the rest of the kindergarteners for some reason had decided to do beverages, meals and chai coffee all at once, with two trolleys making their agonisingly slow progress down the aisle as if they were no-legged Siamese twins.

Which means it took forever to even make it halfway down the aisle. I am not joking when I say it took over 90 minutes to finish serving a not-quite-full 777. So those who got served first were basically sitting with empty trays for an hour, getting agitated.

And even though they confirmed special meal requests before departure, they clearly forgot all about them during service. So every time the slow-as-Manmohan cart stopped by someone who had a special meal they had to go back to the galley to find and fetch it.

There were two Germans sitting in the row in front of us (I nicknamed Karl und Heinzie). Well, Karl und Heinzie were clearly getting agitated because of the time it was taking for the service. Lots of muttering in German, featuring "scheise" and "schnell" and "warum"! I could hear them over the IFE at times… very entertaining!

I had finished a movie (Horrible Bosses. Hilarious) and managed to fall asleep and still the cart seemed like a tiny dot on the horizon. Next thing I know I was awoken with a sharp poke on my shoulder. "Yes?" the ever so delightful Abdul barked. At first I thought it was a dream and I was in another world.

Seriously? "Yes"? That's it? "Yes" what?

Oh well, Abdul can get PMS too, right? Even if he's male. And even though the JetChildren's brains still don't seem to have reached puberty.

It took me a second to recover, and then I asked him what he had. The options were good (even if barked out rather uninspiringly): desi veg, desi chicken and phoren phees.

No Asian food though. And no menu either. Not that one needs a menu, but it is an observation.

I got the veggie: which was roti, rice, bhendi and paneer. The whole meal was nearly chilled by the time we were served and though it looked like a vile concoction, the two bites I took indicated it would have been a very decent meal, had it been served at least warm.

My cousin Ben got the western fish and, after one bite, arrived at the same conclusion: it was cold, dry and nasty, but would have been pretty tasty had it been served an hour before.

Interestingly, the "salad" was boiled rajma and corn kernels on shredded lettuce. Forget about dressing, there wasn't even salt in the "salad". Weird.

There was butter on the tray, but no bread was ever offered to anyone. What was also odd was that there was no yogurt on my desi tray, whilst the western trays had it. The revolting "After Mint" was, of course, omnipresent and made the whole cabin stink.

Dessert looked like it was an Opera Cake. It had payers of pink cream, so I was expecting to taste strawberry or something when the fork reached my mouth. Turns out it was a pineapple cake and the pink was just for colour. That was a bit bizarre, but the cake tasted fantastic. It was brilliant.

Abdul also asked if we wanted anything else to drink. Some beer or juice? Tea or coffee? Turns out he would relay the request to the JetChild who was manning the second trolley of the convoy, she would pour the beverages and he would hand them out.

Ben asked for a white wine to go with his fish. Both the wine and the fish were the same temperature: one too warm to be potable and the other too cold to be edible.

During all this the cabin was a mess. People were queuing up behind and between trolleys, the crew hadn't quite worked out what they were doing and how to get to the galley when stuck between carts… What a shambles.

By the time they were done serving everyone and clearing up it was nearly four hours into the flight. Then they dimmed the lights for a whole 30 minutes. During which time Clueless Chopra came on the PA to squawk about the duty free. And then came on again to peddle JetPrivilege.

Aiyiyiyiy!

Then, a good hour before arrival, all the lights came on. Then they took away the headphones and completely switched off the IFE. Not even the map was functioning. The screens all displayed "Thank You for flying Jet" and the same ghastly boarding music started blaring. For an hour.

Enough of Can You Feel the Love Tonight. It's long overdue for a change.

And no, I did not feel it tonight. I felt something. But it wasn't Jet's love.

The plane stopped at a remote stand (of course; Jet to cheap to pay). Though everyone shot out of their seats immediately, for several minutes there was no movement at all.

Then one of the JetChildren made a belief-defying announcement: (paraphrasing here) "There is a bus shortage."

I'm pretty sure that wasn't necessarily the case, but "shortage" is the exact word that she used. Wow.