[DigitalOne]

I am not a frequent traveller, so my opinion may differ from those with more experience .

I flew from Bengaluru to New Delhi last week by Air India. The flight was a Vistara converted one. I guess the crew also may have been ex-Vistara.

I had a very pleasant experience. The breakfast was good. The service was excellent - they were passing around water bottles freely, one customer asked for extra bread and the attendant gave bread and butter without batting an eyelid. The aircraft was clean and neat. And all this at a price lower than Indigo.

Old AI aircrafts with AI crew may still have issues, as many have pointed out. But as their new plane deliveries in significant numbers start happening from later this year, that side of things is also bound to improve. I am willing to give AI a couple of more years to get things right.

I returned by Air India Express. Though it can't be compared with Air India?Vistara, the experience was better than an Indigo flight. That it departs out of T-3 in Delhi is a plus .

[itwasntme]

2025/6 will be a game changer for both AI & 6E with their wide body fleets and the 321XLR. Proud to see!

Air India’s First A321neo, A350-1000 and 787-9 Delivery Timeline
https://aviationa2z.com/index.php/20...very-timeline/

[Genie]

Any idea how the NY to Mumbai flight is these days? Also the Delhi to Chicago flight. Are they flying the old planes or new ones in these sectors? If new, which ones are these?

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

...That it departs out of T-3 in Delhi is a plus .

Air India operating from T2 in Bangalore is a huge plus too. Less crowded inside, plus pick-ups and drop-offs are far more convenient with the basement parking and easy access to all levels. T1 is increasingly chaotic.

They're also making an effort to reduce delays, which combined with Indigo's downhill trend overall, makes Air India easier to recommend for domestic routes.

In-flight experience is still hit or miss depending what plane & crew you get (should change as fleet is renewed and Vistara training is adopted, hopefully), but all I really care about for a domestic flight is being transported safely without delays. Anything else is a plus.

[moralfibre]

More and more heartbreaking experiences from travellers continue to deter me from making Air India my preferred carrier for international travel. I was a regular until 2022 and moved over to Singapore Air.

Link to LinkedIn post.

But at the check-in counter, a casual comment shattered it all:

“Seats aren’t working in business class. We’ll either offload you or shift you to economy.”

Just like that.

No empathy. No accountability.
We had paid for this—planned this—only to be told we were lucky to be “offered” economy class. Eventually, after much protest, we were rerouted via London. The very thing we were trying to avoid.

For someone who needs assistance, this is a punishing reroute.
Instead of a 7 a.m. arrival, we’ll now land at 3:30 p.m.—after three times the effort, three times the fatigue.

[RohanDheman]

Originally Posted by Genie

Any idea how the NY to Mumbai flight is these days? Also the Delhi to Chicago flight. Are they flying the old planes or new ones in these sectors? If new, which ones are these?

Delhi to Chicago is almost always on the older 777ERs (VT-AL registrations). The Delhi to New York flights are now on the 350-900.

[McLaren Rulez]

Originally Posted by moralfibre

More and more heartbreaking experiences from travellers continue to deter me from making Air India my preferred carrier for international travel. I was a regular until 2022 and moved over to Singapore Air.

I mean, if you have a choice and budget isn't a problem, why would anyone pick AI over SQ?

Today's special episode is the flight from Singapore to Chennai. It was supposed to depart at 8.45 a.m. and guess what, it's still on the tarmac at Changi as of 15.00 local time. What's more, the idiots boarded passengers onto a broken plane with no AC/electricity for a full hour (and counting) instead of letting them wait at the gate.

Useless airline, hope it goes bust soon.

[Theyota]

China-tells-airlines-stop-taking-boeing-jets-as-trump-tariffs-expand-trade-war

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...pand-trade-war

I hope Air India and Akasa can take advantage of this and get their act together.

[Turbanator]

Originally Posted by Theyota

China-tells-airlines-stop-taking-boeing-jets-as-trump-tariffs-expand-trade-war

Yeah, and what happens to the one they are already using, spares and all that

Trump wants to show who is the boss, and Xi is not the premier of China from 30 years ago. Xi believes that the USA will have trouble in sourcing a lot of material from other countries, and Trump plans to have everything moved to the USA. Ultimately, time will tell, but more or less, China will lose as Americans have the USD on their side. Also, Trump will influence a lot of companies to start investing more. We will know in the next few weeks. Haven't heard yet from major manufacturers who have promised to invest back in the USA.

[ads11]

Originally Posted by McLaren Rulez

I mean, if you have a choice and budget isn't a problem, why would anyone pick AI over SQ?

Today's special episode is the flight from Singapore to Chennai. It was supposed to depart at 8.45 a.m. and guess what, it's still on the tarmac at Changi as of 15.00 local time. What's more, the idiots boarded passengers onto a broken plane with no AC/electricity for a full hour (and counting) instead of letting them wait at the gate.

Useless airline, hope it goes bust soon.

Here's the thing though, while Air India still does have royal cock ups like this, they're not alone. I've faced similar issues from the kind of acknowledged top tier airlines like Emirates and Qatar to name but a few.

Once with Qatar, flying LHR to DOH, they took off, nearly made it out of UK airspace only to land back after circling a while to lose fuel. They inform us the front portside door hadn't been properly shut due to a faulty screw so we're stuck on a random part of the apron for hours waiting to get this fixed. All this while they can't let us deboard and they can't turn on the APU so we're just cooking inside.

Emirates I won't forgive for the way they just left all their passengers in Chennai during the floods of 2015 when even little old Druk Air managed to extricate them and find them alternate passage. I could rant for hours about that particular debacle. They were the only airline still checking in passengers well into the evening and the continuous torrential downpour when it had already become patently obvious that no flights would take off that day (or for days afterwards).

I will admit though I've yet to see or hear of similar cock ups from Singapore Airlines. So do agree if price and all else being equal, hard to justify not going for them as things stand.

Originally Posted by Theyota

China-tells-airlines-stop-taking-boeing-jets-as-trump-tariffs-expand-trade-war

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...pand-trade-war

I hope Air India and Akasa can take advantage of this and get their act together.

Not sure I follow. How would domestic airlines benefit? All I can think of is if they're able to jump ahead in the order queue. For models with huge order book backlogs, that's no small feat.

[pedrolourenco]

My last 4 Air India Flights have all been after the takeover. All have been decent.
SIN-BOM AI343 - 10 Jul 24
BOM-GOI AI685 - 11 Jul 24
DEL-GOI AI0885 - 19 Oct 24
BOM-GOI AI683 - 25 Feb 25
GOI-BOM AI604 - 21 Apr 25

BOM-GOI AI683, I got a free upgrade to premium economy.
DEL-GOI AI0885, there was a mistake in my surname. The travel agent got a note made in the system with the correct spelling to match my ID. However I am unable to enter this flight in my app as it's not accepting either of the surname spellings.

I also had 2 Maharaja accounts which I managed to merge. I will have to ask customer care to sort out the issue with the DEL-GOI and also give me points for the first 4 flights as the app is only showing points for the last flight.

On the last flight we had an air hostess who was retiring at the end of the month after 36 years of service. The pilot made the announcement. She also came around the cabin and interacted with the passengers. People were congratulating her. She was really happy.

[volkman10]

Campbell Wilson to step down as Air India Express chairman.

Wilson, who has been the Chairman of Air India Express since June 2022, will also be moving out of the budget airline's board.

Air India CEO Campbell Wilson will step down as the Chairman of Air India Express and Air India's Chief Commercial Officer Nipun Aggarwal will assume the chairmanship of the budget airline.

Link:

[IAmGroot]

Flew Air India from Pune to San Francisco (SFO) via Delhi and return to Mumbai. Posting a short review.

Aircrafts: VT-ALH from Delhi to SFO and VT-AEG from SFO to Mumbai.

The main twist in the tale was closure of Pakistani Airspace for Indian aircrafts and how swiftly Air India reacted.

The journey started with domestic flight between Pune and Delhi, nothing special to write about. There was 4 hours gap between domestic and international leg of my journey, however the domestic leg was delayed by 2 hours and that created a bit of anxiety. The most anxious part was that it took full 30 minutes to deplane at Delhi, thanks to a mal-functioning Aerobridge. We had to take a very long bus route to arrive at terminal. 25 mins is a very long time, given that Delhi is AI's home turf and there is no shortage of resource to get things moving. Thankfully due to dedicated transfer desk at New Delhi, I was at the at Gate in time for AI-183 that leaves Delhi at 3 PM. Some passengers did miss their international connections. Negative marks to AI on this, you cannot be world-class airlines with poor feeder service in a hub-spoke model.

For Delhi-SFO flight, AI-183, the aircraft was VT-ALH, B777-200LR. Boarding started at 2 PM with extra security check at boarding gates. I could see why flight to North America need extra security check. A woman during this secondary screening was found with a metal saucepan in her handbag! Not sure how the security guys missed it.

I don't really carry a good mobile with camera hence don't have good pictures to show.

The boarding was smooth and as soon as I sat on my chosen seat (yes, I paid 4000 Rs for it), I realized that the (Inflight Entertainment) IFE screen is dead, a feature needed for a 15-hour flight. Upon informing the flight attendant was told that it will power-up once airborne. It was not to be though.

Since it was my first journey with B777-200LR, I was very excited to fly and observe things, hence I put the non-functioning IFE behind. Anyway, we had functional inflight Wi-Fi based BYOD working. I had my power bank hence my personal device served as IFE.

We took off from Delhi little bit behind schedule and followed the usual path of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia to SFO. The path takes you over Hindu Kush mountains and since this was a daytime flight was lucky to see the mountain ranges.

The meals served by Air India are always good, and the cabin crew were working hard to provide services. In between services also they would provide beverages on demand.

The flight reached SFO on time and we were in a very long immigration queues, around 1.5 hours.

My return journey was by SFO-Mumbai direct flight.

Few days before journey the heart wrenching Pahalgam attack happened, followed by restrictions by India and reciprocal actions by Pakistan. Pakistan closed its airspace for Indian aircrafts. I knew that my flight had to be affected hence was closely following the response from Air India. Next days all America to India bound flights were diverted mid-air to Copenhagen and some to Vienna. SFO-Mumbai flight 2 days before my travel was diverted to Copenhagen while overflying Russia.

I must admire Air-India to take up the challenge and re-route flights. The workhorse B777-200LR was to demonstrate its real capabilities. AI tried to keep the non-stop route and SFO-Mumbai flight next day came non-stop (17.5 Hrs of flight time) with a detour around Pakistan. Even SFO-Delhi took detour and came non-stop. This might not have been economical or technically too feasible, because the very next day all flight from North America settled into a halt pattern at Vienna. As of today, Vienna has become a refuelling stop for all AI flight between India and North America.

My SFO-Mumbai flight was announced with a fuel halt at Vienna. The day I checked-in at the airport the person at counter was explaining to each passenger about the additional halt of 1 hour. AI counter and operations at SFO are done by Thirty-Party by the looks of it. Now AI-180 from SFO to Mumbai was SFO to Vienna and Vienna to Mumbai. The aircraft doing duty was VT-AEG B777-200LR. This is Ex-Delta aircraft and had better kept interiors. Also, the IFE was working this time.

After a long 11 hours journey over North America, Greenland, Atlantic and Europe we made it to Vienna. The aerial view of approach to Vienna was all green with many windmills. The young and dynamic crew of AI made the flight very comfortable. As soon as we landed in Vienna, the aircraft lavatories were given a cleanup and some extra snacks loaded given that our journey was going to be 3 hours longer.

The aircraft was at a remote stand and did not need push-back. Immediately after re-fuelling we took off to a setting sun. We traversed the remaining part of Europe and entered Iran and then headed south towards Oman, this is again a bit of detour to avoid Pakistan airspace. Night had set-in and we were over Arabian sea heading towards Mumbai.

The Mumbai approach was from South, and I had the best view from left side window. The aircraft did a perfect circle from southern tip of Mumbai then parallel to MTHL, followed by a nice short turn over Navi-Mumbai to line up for runway-27. Not too much of in-bound traffic at 5:30 AM hence no holding and a quick short-final.

T2 terminal of Mumbai was smooth experience, 5 mins in Immigration queue, 20 min at baggage collection and a quick walk through green channel of customs. Got an intercity Ola in few minutes and another 2.5 hrs ride to home at Pune.

All the gains that AI had because of use of Russian airspace has suddenly gone away because of closure of Pakistani airspace. ME3 could gain some advantage in medium term. Currently AI is honouring its bookings and in future the prices of tickets are bound to go up for AI. AI even with its technical halt would be favourable to many Indians given that there is no change of aircraft or need to transit through a foreign airport. Many passengers in my flight were senior citizens who would any day prefer AI, for familiarity, food, language and point-to-point service.

[ads11]

Originally Posted by IAmGroot

Currently AI is honouring its bookings and in future the prices of tickets are bound to go up for AI.

Prices indeed have shot up. I was looking up flights over the weekend just gone, for parents to come into LHR admittedly at short notice. I suspected routes via DEL would be majorly impacted but hadn't thought the BOM routes would be as well. Looked like the route was being offered as a code share Lufthansa via FRA for eg with an economy return to CCU going for 2.5K GBP each. Other routes were travel agency ones patching together multi stops involving stops in Turkey and self changeovers with Pegasus Airlines or the likes of easyJet. Those weren't much cheaper either.

Needless to say they opted against flying this past weekend and instead have gone for an Emirates flight the week after.

This airspace closure would have a much bigger impact on Air India considering it's USP was the shorter route over Russia it could avail, compared to other better rated major airlines. (On a tangent but related note, guess those new IndiGo routes into LHR and MAN get impacted too). It's interesting how vulnerable carriers with global ambitions are to the vagaries of geopolitical airspace closures. I remember how Finnairs plans for routes to the far East were kneecapped by the closure of Russian airspace following the Russian invasion.

Can't remember the last time I heard of a refuelling stop on a long haul flight. Must've been a child when I last flew a long haul route that had such a stop.

[dust-n-bones]

AI seems to have changed its route for the west coast of the USA.


This earlier route was via the 'stans' cradling around Pakistan.



This is the flight today via Mongolia, China, Myanmar, Bangladesh.

There doesn't seem to be much saving in flight times (around 18 hrs either way).

https://aviationa2z.com/index.php/20...anada-flights/