aktchi

I just flew AI from London to DEL in coach and had the same reaction. Boarding process was chaotic. Seats had no padding---at first I thought our seats were defective and I checked others, but they were all like wooden benches. Flight attendants and cabin service were good.

StevenN

Hi All
I am new to this forum and only found you while doing a search about excess baggage charges levied on domestic flights by AirIndia.
Some were complaining about their poor service and it reminded me of a recent flight experience that if anything may be a similar experience others have received.
I am sure I will find out.

We travelled LHR-GOI 08-11-12
We upgraded the seats with Optiontown who failed to get the ETicket confirmed before the flight checked in. Our check in took over an hour and many phone calls.
The flight was excellent apart from the on board entertainment.
The crew were very good as you would expect being up front.
We landed a little late for the connection from BOM-GOI but were boarded quickly.
The biggest pain was with less than 5min to land the pilot announced he was turning back due to fog.
We spent the next 3hrs on the plane before being returned to the terminal.
There we were left without representation from the airline for a further 4 hours.
When we finally got hold of someone they told us we could get a meal on the airline but he didn't tell the food hall staff so that didn't happen and after another 3 hours we finally left for Goa. We should have landed 6am we arrived after 5pm.
All we received from AirIndia when we complained eventually after 2 months was a poor apology without a true acceptance of their poor performance.
Worst still was upon our return my wife became ill.
Not enough for emergency treatment but enough for me to try to ask if I could pay for another upgrade so we could use the lounge before the flight.
I requested this at 1.00am our flight was due to leave at 7.00am.
They finally came to our aid at 6.30am.
So for my idea of somewhere quiet for my wife to rest for three hours turned into 20min while I paid £650 to upgrade the seats.
I put this in the email too. They never responded to it.
Trying to claim for missing miles to is a right pain.
Unless you have the boarding cards you have to jump through hoops to claim your miles.

Sorry about the rant.

You may ask will we use them again?
Well the answer is we are.
We're using them for an internal flight in March.

Lets hope they can get this flight right

Steve

Flyfromscratch

I feel your pain man.. been there with AI.. I have had some very bad experience with them and I avoid them like the plague.. being an Indian it hurts me to say it, but the National Carrier is complete rubbish..

If I were you, I would change my tickets to another airlines.. Indigo, spicejet or even Jet Konnect if I had to..

Simz

StevenN

Hi Simz

We looked to see if others had similar flight times and AI worked out best.

It's not the unforeseen problems that's the issue as almost any carrier can suffer these (I say most as others can land in fog)
It's just the lack of redress or responsibility taken when things do go wrong.

Having flown with most and had the odd issue. I did like the Kingfisher experience but perhaps you can't be both polite and profitable?

Cheers

Steve

Azzuristar

Airline: Air India

Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER / 200 ER / host of 757's

Flight route: EWR-BOM and DEL-JFK, BOM <--> RPR (8 round trips), BOM <--> Multiple Cities

Booking class: Economy

Seats: The seats were ok, better than anything that some premium American jets like Delta have to offer by a light year.
Boarding: They try to board the Assisted PAX then Pregnant / Family Members then by seat row numbers. If everyone followed that, it would work, blame lies partially with AI staff and with the fact that everyone is incredibly tired and annoyed after the sham of a security process that folks have to follow in India.

Entertainment system: Decent. Still prefer it over United and DL or DL Junior aka Jet Airways. Some good choices in the classic movies section

Food: Probably one of their strong points. The food is very good, be it on domestic jets or on Internationals

FA: Extremely Helpful, not snobbish or high handed, like those that infest the DL JFK-AMS or the ATL-AMS quite often.
Overall:Boarding process needs some sort of a fix, but overall, this airline needs better publicity, its product as of now is alreadiy better than DL and arguably United, but needs to get its head out of its rear about the internal issues. Having flown Jet Airways as well for about 11 round-trips in the last 3 months on my visit to India, I would say, if they manage to sort out their internals, this is the best airline in the country by far.

highflier86

I think your review hits the jackpot. AI these days are still trying to nurse the hangover of 5 years ago, where planes were old, and a flight booked on the 2nd did not necessarily mean flying out on the 2nd

Azzuristar

That being said, I do hope one day Jet develops the cojones to work as a VLCC/LCC Stateside. It will teach them a lot, and it will open up a new market too.

That being said, My Star Alliance Loyalty is going for a toss, once AA and US are officially married.

highflier86

Stick with star. Assuming you fly international, OW does not have any stand out products in premium except for maybe CX. Star has Swiss, LH and others with really cool products.

I curse my OW alliance sometimes and not being able to fly the best or even the cheapest. That being said, Qatar should help the OW cause a lot as well.

PVDtoDEL

With BA/QR and QF/EK tieups on the way, *O is going to be the least integrated alliance by far.

I have already switched from US to UA, because *O's network simply sucks where I want to fly. I'm incredibly pissed about the merger at this point.

Azzuristar

My problems are with the fact that AI is joining Star when I will become a OW keep for a while. Mainly because MEM has only US as the viable option most of the times for me. (I be damned if I ever touch an AirTran jet), and I
cannot take DL for my affinity to the group that wants to kick DL off MEM.

So that means I am weekly domestic (MEM-PHL) flyer on US, which is on OW, which makes me "status"-tically defunct domestically. I use International maybe once or twice a year. So that does not help me one bit at all. And I could not care much about international jets, some early boarding and bag room on a jet that gets there on time and does not cost me an Arm and a Leg (or my clients) is about right, which US was till this point, and the fact that it tied into Star, made my occasional UA getaways nice. Now it just out right sucks.

To top it, UA is reducing gates at MEM, from July 1, to make it just 1 big gate with 12 Departures a day, which may or may not be a nice thing most of the time. I fear leaving MEM (I would hate to do that, no state income tax and cheap cost of living as such) would be my only option sometime in 2013.

PVDtoDEL

If you're going MEM-PHL every week, I'd look at MEM-ZFV on UA. Far, Far more convenient if you're trying to get to the city.

Azzuristar

Wow! I did not know that, I have to get to Voorhees NJ every week, so PHL is the nearest. This will continue all through the year. ZFV on UA is awesome. Now I have to get them to status match.

Azzuristar

Aargh, its cheaper to fly from Little Rock.

Keyser

yet another strange experience on an ai flight....all economy flight from del-bbi....i was sitting in the 3rd row....they started the meal service & by the time they came to me there was no non-veg option left....i asked them how that's possible as they had only served 2 rows before me....their answer was that since it was a tuesday they only loaded 5 non-veg trays....i guess i shouldn't expect anything different from ai....

jasepl

Oh Jet do that too.

BOM-HKG in Premiere, and they had run out of the pancakes by the time they got to me. And I was the third person to be served.

Mind you, the pancakes were the only non-desi breakfast option and they wouldn't have loaded more than two of those meals on a flight where the J cabin was almost always predominantly non-desi passengers.


What's AI's Tuesday logic?