Landed in BOM 2hrs late seemingly due to some paperwork issues on the ground at JFK.

There are little things that stood out and made the journey a bit better. For example, the jet bridge was completely backed up as they lined up all the wheelchairs and families with children and then halted boarding. When an AI agent saw our F boarding passes, he whisked us past all of them and let us onboard first. Seems they do value their F pax.

All in all, the flight was ok. The service was great, and the crew really did their best with that they had to offer. All very friendly
The old EY seats are definitely showing their age. Still shocking that half the cabin was inoperable
Food wasn’t great, and the basic Laurent Perrier champagne definitely isn’t up to F standards.
I did like the Tumi pajamas.

The escort upon arrival in BOM was nice.

Am I jumping to return to AI? No
And was it worth the significant cost I paid for my last minute one way F ticket? Definitely not, especially compared to F on airlines like EK, etc.
But it did the job and at least got me to India.

But otherwise it still can’t compare to other airlines. Hoping a couple more years of changes by TATA group allows them to improve even more.

In some ways seems far better than what I experienced a couple of weeks ago when it came to staff and service levels. But also far worse when it comes to the hard product. Hmmm.. Seems suspiciously like the AI of "old" (government control, pre Tata).

I do need to write about the highlights of my two recent AI First flights - at times horrifying yet also sublime at the same time. Plus ça change, as they say.

Here's a good review of AI's current First Class product on the ex-EY 777.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAbqLkWhchs

Thanks for sharing. It's still such a hit and miss with AI F. Basic stuff like boarding priority, champagne flutes and serving it on the ground no matter what the damn VAT is, cutlery properly presented properly etc. Food presentation has improved though and that's a good thing but still has some ways to go to be true F. Hard product though has increased leaps and bounds though. Have an escort to the plane and serve an extra ordinary champagne to get people start talking about AI F.

I'm a little annoyed with AI overall right now for where they are and what they're doing... but regret not having enough (any) miles in UA to do try this for the error 88k miles fare they had running...

I found some AI F availability LHR-BOM for the end of September.
But UA has increased the price to 165K miles for that segment!!!

I have seen it before for 61K or something similar.

Wow.
Is Aeroplan pricing any better for AI F??
----
ETA = Aeroplan is 90K miles plus tax. Not bad. Same flights available as well.

Now i wonder if I should collect Aeroplan miles. LOL !

AI F is 130k through AC.

I've used Lifemiles for BOM-LHR on AI in F. This was only 60/K miles.

AV has one of the best award charts and constant miles sales... but I wish they had an decent Indian transfer partner.

Nonstop Europe-DEL should be 45k in C and 65k in F on AC. For some reson London-India shows with 90k in F.

That's because BOM/DEL - LHR are both >4/K miles in distance, hence the higher band kicks in (4001 - 6000 miles).

DEL sadly by just 180 miles! On the plus side, BOM/DEL to MUC come in just under 4k for LH F :)

Just had a look at the First Class menu for my upcoming BOM-LHR flight in F. You can do so on https://www.airindia.com/in/en/exper...xperience.html

Compared the Business and First Class menu's. There was only one difference: the file name. Everything else is exactly the same.

The wine list is exactly the same as well, I believe. Flying the same route in F in a few hours, will report here.

For my date, there doesn’t seem to be any option at all for first, only business and economy (maybe because this flight just switched from a 787 a few days ago?)

The link only shows Business and Economy menu’s for me. Most of the AI F reviews I’ve read have allowed F pax to get multiple entres and not follow set rules. So at a min you get that. Btw the one thing I like about AI’s early morning flights out of India is that the breakfast is a light meal and the main meal is lunch. I fly UA a lot in J on their 9:30am ish departures from the EU to NYC and breakfast is always the “big” meal - I’m always hungry on those flights.

Checked the menu again today and now I see some differences between J and F.