Desirees

Hello,

Dont travel as often to accumulate miles to upgrade - so nowadays, on my annual trips to India, I do some intense hunting to locate affordable business class. No offence to our US carriers, but I do try to avoid flying US airlines when paying for business, because I have read such mixed reviews on them. This time however, i have located a good fare from RDU to CCU - and it is on United, EWR to BOM Did some searching on reviews, and cant find anything recent on that specific leg, except for a not so nice review from TPG.

Seat/FA service/Food - important. Lounges - Kind of in the middle.

Can some of the frequent flyers please share your views with me? Hoping to get some opinions before I buy the tickets...coming up a little shy of 6K - hence the need to ensure I am choosing an experience I wont regret.

WineCountryUA

It doing these comparisons it helps to know what other carriers you might consider or have recently flown?

Your EWR-BOM will likely be on a 722 with 2x2x2 seating in business (Believe the TPG review was of the 722 with 2x4x2 business)

What aspects of experience matters most to you? The seat? Sleeping comfort? IFE? Food? FA service? pre-flight lounges? ???

Everything You Want to Know About Where to Sit on a pmCO 777 (ver 2: 2-class 50BF) contains many comments on preferred seats.

2017 Let's Eat - Polaris First & Polaris Business will provide an overview (not specific to EWR-MUM) of UA's food for buiness.

Desirees

Good points.

I have flown Aer Lingus/Etihad/Emirates/Air Canada recently.. Seat/FA service/Food is very important in the order listed as priorities. lounges - Medium.

WineCountryUA

Add to the earlier post some links on the seating and food.
FA service will be North American style, generally OK but the american carriers are not well know for their FA service. Certainly different from Emirates .

sbm12

Food ex-USA will be decent. Not so much ex-BOM in my experience. Bulkhead seats are better than the other options but all are fully flat beds with decent IFE selection and power ports. Ask for PJs and a gel pillow during boarding.

aacharya

Should also consider that apart from AI, I don't think the other *A carriers fly this non-stop. So LH and others get you in at 2 am, where this one comes in 9 pm or so.

jfk747

Buy a ticket in first or business on a me 3 carrier and enjoy the trip. United is miserable unless you have to .

MatthewLAX

Except that EK may not even have a lie-flat bed and will have middle seats in business.

usbusinesstraveller

I've flown EWR-BOM (and DEL) in GPU'd J and like it. Bulkhead seats are best for the footwells though I value the center two seats over that for all aisle access. Service has been good in both directions, food was fine (go for the fish or veggie option, the lamb isn't great).

And being non stop from the US you land at BOM between 8.30-9.30pm, way better than connecting via Europe on LH when you arrive at stupid o'clock. With the evening arrival I overnight at the nearby Hilton (only 5 mins car ride), have a couple of cocktails and sleep. Then continue to either BLR or HYD on 9W next morning.

skidooman

The main bones of contention I have with EWR-BOM have been the following:

1- Reliability. I got from time to time planes that went MX, I also was denied boarding because I was "customer #200 " and the plane would face a snowstorm on its way to NJ, so it wouldn't board a full flight. I expect this NOT to happen to a business customer, though, but who knows.

2- When (1) happens, do not expect help from the local contractor operating the base at BOM. They are helpless. They actually went one notch higher and lied to me by telling me that it wouldn't be a problem to fly the day after from DEL. Fortunately, I called United and figured out that the geniuses in BOM lied to their teeth and actually had me scheduled to leave 5 days later. BOM is not exactly a nice city and the hotel where they put me wasn't actually nice. A nice phone rep from Utah got me on a flight out of DBX the day after (so, a few years ago), but before I got to her it took 3 different calls to CSS. So, if you fly UA and you get MXed, be prepare to take your destiny into your own hands, BOM crew won't help.

3- Independently of which airline you choose, if you transfer in BOM to go somewhere else DO NOT fly in BOM on the same day on anything but an airline arriving at Terminal 2. If you arrive at Terminal 1, believe it or not, you need to get through security to get to the inter-terminal bus. I saw lines there that took me more than two hours to get through (because the geniuses running this airport thought that one scanner is more than enough for the job when people have tons of bulky luggage they carry around). And then, to make it worse, when you actually arrive at Terminal 2, you are dumped on the curbside city-side, so you have to do this whole dance all over again. Which means you need to fly 9W or AI (in this case, a risk), or perhaps Vistara (do they fly to T2 in Mumbai?), but forget about Indigo (the largest airline).

So, all in all, I cannot recommend this flight. Crew from EWR usually means service is not the best in UA system. Ex-CO J class hard product is OK, not stellar or anything, but it is flat seat. Food on flights to and from India tend to be limited because of the need not to offend Indians (obviously, no beef) and, at least in my experience, the "replacement meal" (Indian) is usually not so good, which is a bit surprising given that I got pretty amazing chicken on AI domestic in Y.

When I book travel to or out of India, for whatever reason the EWR flights are overpriced from BOS. But they always give me a cheaper alternative with LH or AC. Which I gladfully accept. And I get my PQD.

JBord

I've had some miserable experiences in my life. Flying J or F on United doesn't come close to qualifying. It doesn't compare to some of the ME airlines, and a few of the Asian airlines. But I actually now prefer UA business to several of the European airlines (I'm looking at you LH!), especially for the seat, which is important to the OP.

malgudi

What's wrong with LH seats?

tarheelnj

LH and LX have some relatively inexpensive J flights through MUC and ZRH that avoid BOM. Here are a couple EWR-CCU options for February (couldn't find RDU-CCU, but but you should be able to get to EWR relatively easily - not counting WX issues).

JBord

I find them uncomfortable. They're certainly better than a coach seat, but I like UA's biz seats better.

Desirees

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