More operational inconsistencies continue.. VT-AEH is now doing DEL-SFO and BOM-JFK has swapped to the old 772/773. Will Air India ever move past this?

Are any of these spiffy new planes going to make an appearance in ORD? We had a comfortable plane in January of 2022, not sure which plane it was, but there were ottomans in the J seats, and every flight since has been horrible. I'm still recovering from my Fed flight where I pulled something.

I keep trying, but haven't figured out how to tell which planes are the better ones from Delta.

I'm trying to go SFO-BOM-COK (Kochi) sometime before end of April, but no matter how I try looking I don't understand how to tell which of the flights using one of the better AI planes that were once Delta.

Anyone have time to either share some flights with the newer planes that depart SFO from between April 17 and end of April (after 75-90 days, flexible), or share how to figure it out (prefer coach around $4K round trip? I read through some other threads and an outside link that was shared and I still don't understand. :-/ I have traveled a lot, but admit that I always used United and chase miles when doing so. This time I want to fly SFO-BOM-COK on AI and I'm paying cash.

p.s. if they're no longer using the better planes SFO-BOM, I'm cool with SFO-DEL with one of the newer planes (or I guess I could depart from a different city in the US...I'm located in PDX).


Thanks!

The best clue to the plane identified for that sector for that day is the seat map. AI's old cabin havs business in 2-3-2 and economy vs the new delta planes have business in 1-2-1, a premium economy section and economy.

If your chosen flight/day is selling premium economy seats - good odds its on the new delta plane.. AI has been selling PE now for SFO/JFK flights from May 15th so chances are good that your SFO BOM has new delta planes..

https://simpleflying.com/air-india-l...onal%20flights

FR24 data shows they have been pretty consistent with using the new delta planes (VT-AEF/AEG/AEH) on BOM-SFO since jan with odd swap out to VT-ALH (old AI) probably for some mechanical reason..

Note - booking the flight which has PE doesnt guarantee the new plane (just good odds) as operational reasons can make them swap to old planes without notice (if you booked PE and the swap results in downgrade, you can get a free date change though)..

Extremely helpful and great to know about changing if there's a downgrade. I was a lazy frequent flyer in the past...just going with United's booking system and Chase miles. Looking forward to getting back to collecting miles again, though, and headed back out into the world after so long. I'm guessing things will work out now that I have more info, but if I run into issues or learn anything to share so others can possibly use the info in the future, I'll pop back to share it. Thanks so much to everyone on FlyerTalk who have has always been so helpful. <3

So after all these headlines about off-the-shelf ex-DL, ex-EY, ex-SU planes, there are still only three leased 777s in service? What are they doing with the other planes, resting them?

A colleague flew on an old 773 (from ORD) and reports a dirty cabin, nonworking seats, and a party going on in the curtained-off middle seats, rear J cabin. Do the ex-DL planes in service have crew "rest" downstairs or do they still use regular J seats?

The DL 777 have the crew rest in a cabin located above the regular cabin in the rear. Reactivating stored aircraft takes 3-6 weeks if you find a certified MRO outfit that has time for you. Every decent place is currently full/busy as airlines bring back their stored capacity.

The 15th May deadline for Premium Economy sales is fast approaching and the other two Delta planes are nowhere in sight.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...2a1fa6bcfc.png
Judging by the scheduled v actual departure and arrival times this past week for AI176, I would say nothing has changed. Despite using the newer VT-AE* aircraft. Does anyone know why these significant delays in departure? Crew issues? Mechanicals?

Interesting that AI still has a lot of delays on both SFO-BLR and SFO-BOM. Should they maybe increase the ground time in SFO to give more of a buffer? Also the aircraft seems to have over 10 hours on the ground in BLR/BOM - so why the delays? I don’t think the aircrafts do any thing other than BLR/BOM-SFO right?
I looked a bit more - is the block time of the flight to low or is the flight hitting some weird winds right now? Literally the flight will leave on time from BOM but arrive one hour late into SFO - before AI’s flights used to arrive early IF they left on time because the block time seemed to have buffer and/or winds were good.

So just to confirm SFO to BLR and back have consistently been ex-Delta? Booked a roundtrip for my dad on those flights so would be bummed if he is stuck with the crappy Air India product

yes, afaict based on tail numbers in flight radar. But those have also been the same flights that have been wildly delayed recently. I expected these planes to suffer fewer delays.

Yes.

It seems like the inbound flight for SFO-BLR is BOM-SFO which has been slightly delayed all of last week, but can't really understand why there are ground delays in SFO. I have a SFO-BLR flight coming up in a few weeks, will speak to the ground staff and share an update here.

thanks!

Just wanted to see if this was still the case