Yeah they still haven't deployed any of the new aircraft to EWR. JFK and SFO should get more consistent now that the third aircraft has arrived.

They are now using the new aircraft on the BOM-JFK route on the same day. I am going to try to switch to that route if they allow it without penalty. If not then I may just cancel & fly on my usual DL/KL/AF options.

Was driving by the Air India office earlier this afternoon so decided to stop & see if I could change my flight without paying an exorbitant amount in change fees & penalties.

In my many visits to the AI city office over the years I have come across a number of familiar faces who seem to have been at that office forever. One is a pleasant & helpful lady who sits at the frequent flyer desk & another is a duty manager who has always been very helpful even during the AI government days. Both know me well & I have even helped out the manager's son with a legal matter in the past so they always treat me nicely every time I have had to go to the office in the past.

I was hoping to run into one of them & luckily they were both there. I went up to both of them separately, chit-chatted for a couple of minutes & then asked the duty manager if she could help with my ticket. I told her there was an equipment change & the aircraft I had originally booked on had changed from BOM-EWR to BOM-JFK on the same day. I asked if it was possible for her to put me on the JFK flight & if that wasn't possible then allow me to cancel the ticket without a penalty.

She said she would try & asked me to wait while she looked into it. After about 20 minutes she came back & said that she had to ask her superiors for permission to change my flight without the fare difference but they had refused. However, as a one time exception she did get permission to let me cancel without a penalty. I asked her to go ahead & do that & she processed the full refund.

I just booked with KL/DL for this upcoming trip. Guess I'll give AI another look for my May trip & hope I have better luck in getting to fly on one of the new planes.

I did tell you these swaps would happen and leave customers fuming.

Good for you for getting a full refund. How stupid is this on AI's part... willing to lose 100% of the fare but not I would assume a minor fraction of that as change fees! Some things never change.

I would have traveled on the older plane had they not let me cancel without a penalty. I'm flying to Milan next week & to Paris next month on the older planes. If I was just looking for a business class ticket to the US then it wouldn't make a difference which aircraft was available. The newer one would definitely be nicer but the older ones would do as well. This trip was specifically to try the new plane which is why I wanted to cancel once they switched the aircraft. Like I said before, its frustrating but not the end of the world.

I believe it had more to do with the manager's intervention than AI's decision. To be fair, the fare difference was quite substantial (over INR 150K) so I'm not surprised they didn't agree to that.

I'm flying to Milan next week & to Paris next month on the older planes. [/QUOTE]

The 'older' B787 business class seats are fine... the B77L seats are plain horrid.

Fair enough. Hopefully at some point over the next year or so they would have upgraded the cabins on all their long haul planes & we won't have to play this guessing game of which aircraft is flying where.

This being FT, we'll still want to know if it is AI, DL, EY or SU interiors.

So true. :D

As far as consistency it does seem like AI is trying to be that (the plane arrivals just got delayed). From one of their announcements, it looked like all BOM-US nonstops would eventually be DL interiors as would BLR-SFO (which is BLR’s only US flight by AI). So I think once it stabilizes, there will be consistency. The bigger question is how will they deploy the Aeroflot A350’s and Etihad 77W. My guess is DEL-EWR will get Etihad as will DEL-JFK. Also DEL-SFO will get either A350 or Etihad. This way all NYC and SFO flights (which are AI’s most premium NA destinations) will have decent interiors. Still waiting for news on what the 77W refurbishments will be. They have to put new seats in J/F and not just change the seat covers. But what will they do and how long will it take???

The immediate reason for putting these planes on BOM-SFO and BLR-SFO is that each of these are 3xweekly routes so they can be served by one plane each (going back and forth). The first plane went to BLR-SFO, the second to BOM-SFO. If they had been able to put two ex-DL planes into service at the same time, they might have deployed them on a daily route.

As of now both the Delta planes are flying BOM-SFO and BOM-JFK and BLR has reverted back to the old 772. The Etihad planes will definitely replace the 773s since they have first class cabins and will probably do JFK/EWR/YYZ and the 359s will do LHR/CDG/FRA.

That's incorrect.
I am booked JFK-BOM on 4/22/23 in J and the seat map shows 2-3-2, the old 77W
Can anybody comment on the seats/IFE(i am told they are not lie flat)service?

erm, its not exactly a stellar experience. More here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/indi...air-india.html

So Air India has officially started selling PE on BOM-JFK, BOM-SFO and BLR-SFO, 15th May onwards. Hopefully this means all 5 Delta aircraft will be in service by then and there will be no more 77W equipment swaps on these sectors.