[sahil624]

I have voted for Vistara for two reasons:

1. Club Vistara Points: They have decent value for the Club Vistara Points. Though availability can be an issue and one has to secure booking well in advance. However, the value of points can be more than ₹1 occasionally. I booked Bangalore to Port Blair return through Club Vistara points for three people and it was only 6k points per person one side while revenue tickets were definitely more than 6k.

2. Quality: Though the food quality has deteriorated a bit recently, nevertheless, they are way ahead of other domestic airlines. Also, in my experience the cabun crew and staff in general is very nice and gentle.

[kaak009]

Air India all the way! Their baggage limit is way better than anything in the business. Being someone who is kinda fat and tall their seats offer the best legroom. Food choices are great as well and in recent travels the on time performance has improved much.

Was a fan of Indigo but recent trips were just pathetic. They have gone way on the side of budget. As V Narayan sir said in his recent post the check in needs to be done through auto machines which is a pure downgrade.
I sure like GoAir but since they went put of business cant comment. Travelled once with Akasa and their leg room in all kind words sucks

[yashg]

I prefer Vistara. I don't fly much, maybe couple of times a year and I prefer a full service carrier. At present there's nothing better than Vistara IMO. After it is merged with Air India, I fear the service levels will go down to match AI's rather than AI's coming up to Vistara's level. Second preference would be IndiGo. That seems like a no nonsense airline.

[SRM]

Voted for Vistara. Although I haven't travelled for quite some time in domestic flights, my father recently did in Vistara and he really had good things to say about the service and comfort. Having used Indigo before and hearing horror stories about how it looks to extract money at every step, I would definitely look to Vistara.

Btw its such a sad scenario for the Indian domestic airline space where we have only 2-3 reliable players in the market for a country of our size and with the demand skyrocketing. Even in the comments here it is essentially between Indigo and Vistara with Air India a distant 3rd.

After Jet Airways went bust there has been a huge void as that was a major airline and Govt hasn't done enough to fill that hole. No wonder the prices are touching sky limits and you have to make do with inferior service as well as there are no choices.

[libranof1987]

While Jet Airways existed, we flew only on that airline - converting our credit card points to JP Miles only made things sweeter. However, in the last several years, we've been mostly at the mercy of Indigo.

Pune Airport doesn't have great connectivity by airlines / routes, so if you have to fly anywhere, chances are, you only have Indigo as an option (Air India, Vistara have very few flights). What's worse is, more often that not, you have to take connecting flights unless you're flying to Mumbai/Bangalore/Delhi.

I hope Air India gets things right and improves connectivity as they consolidate the four airlines, and we get viable options: Spicejet fixing their operations, Akasa expanding, and hopefully, Jet coming back. Indigo needs to be put in their place, going by the extent of negative experiences coming in. Their trajectory is similar to Spicejet's a few years back when they were on top of everything.

I haven't yet had a bad experience flying with anyone, maybe because I keep my expectations to a minimum: mainly, fly with just cabin baggage as much as possible to avoid the mess that check-in counters tend to be, avoid eating airplane food even when included in my fare, use the air travel just for point A - B passage.

I think it is fair to assume the romance of (economy) air travel is long dead. From what I read and hear, Business/First Class travel, on the contrary, is only getting better.

[the.dogfather]

I prefer Indigo for one simple reason, on time performance.
I don't fly much, but when I do decide to fly, giving it preference over driving, time saving is a big factor for the decision.
While I agree with most posts, with regards to Indigo's attitude towards customers, they are mostly on time and I have rarely seen delays with Indigo. In the routes where I travel, I mostly find Indigo and Air India as the options, and the experience with respect to delays with Air India has not been good.
Also, I am blessed with short height and ability to sleep through the flight. So most of the food and services in domestic flights are rarely used. All this makes Indigo my first choice for domestic flights.

[Night_Fury]

Vistara for me. Last week my flight out of Delhi was cancelled due to fog, and they quickly booked me on the next flight to Kochi. The aircraft quality, the food, and the service quality were good. I want to like Air India but the last time I flew with them, water started dropping out of an AC vent. Thankfully it stopped after 15 minutes.

[Aditya94]

I prefer Indigo not because it offers good service (the quality has dropped in fact - the food is horrible) but only because it has so many flights. I frequently Travel MAA-DEL, MAA-BOM and MAA- CCU routes and Indigo has a fantastic spread of timing which suits everyones needs. The timings are so convenient that I take the earliest flight to Delhi from Chennai (@ 2:30) and return back on the same day on the very last flight (which is at 23:50)

They also have last mile connectivity to cities like Chandigarh, Dehradun, Kozhikode, Madurai, Thoothukudi, Hubbali and Pune, which most airlines don't connect to or have very few flights.

I have come to terms with the fact that Indigo is just like an AC bus and I'm totally fine with it. In fact, once we flew to Kathmandu (Nepal) from Delhi in Indigo and it felt like just any other domestic flight (It was an Airbus A321).

[Zen Av8r]

Voted Vistara. My preference is Vistara > Air India > IndiGo. I prefer full service to LCC and these days the costs are close to each other. Seats are far better in the Full Cost carriers and IndiGo gets a thumbs down there. IndiGo has better connectivity and becomes default on routes not operated by Vistara or AI. Miles earned and redeemed on Vistara and AI also help.

[kovilkalai]

My preferred airline is Akasa. However, I will not characterise this preference as "the best airline". It will be the "least poor".

Once the doors of the aircraft are closed, I generally see no difference between Indigo, Vistara and Akasa. Spice Jet, and the Air India twins don't even make this cut. The customer experience is terrible for everything that is unrelated to flying. Here are dodgy things that almost all airlines do frequently:

1. Revise a published schedule weeks before the flight, but they don't update the flight search engines. So, when you THINK a flight is a 4pm flight and book it, quite often you will get an email within minutes stating that the flight has been rescheduled to 10pm. Now, I have to take the trouble to call the airline and move my flight or get a refund (which takes a few days). This is plainly shady. There are other annoying schedule changing tactics that they follow as well.

2. When you book a premium seat with extra legroom, one assumes that the aircraft will have said seat. If the aircraft was swapped in the last minute and the larger seat doesn't exist, then getting your money back is like pulling teeth - most airlines don't have a standard operating procedure to identify services paid for, but not fulfilled and trigger a refund. You will have to call the contact centre, send an email to the finance team and chase them often to get your money

3. I wouldn't call the convenience fee "a scam". I believe airlines can charge whatever the supply and demand allow them to (barring price gouging during emergencies and such). I am personally in favour of unbundling of services as well. However, don't show me price A for the first 3 steps of the buying process and then add price B (for convenience) at the very last step. You know that I am booking the ticket online. Show me the fare with everything included. And then I will add on whatever else I need. The fact that government stepped in to stop airlines separating out the user development fee, but refuse to step in here is telling.

4. The Go First refund thing is plain silly. In bankruptcy claims, passengers who paid money for a service should come first. They have the least assumption of risk. Any agency that has loaned money to Go First (secured or unsecured) has actively evaluated the risk and signed on.

[northstar*]

I prefer Vistara and Air India next.

But Vistara got very less connectivity from my place, so I travel in Indigo the most, but if there is an option, I will definitely look out for Vistara or Air India.

[Satish Pari]

Voted - Vistara

My first choice is Vistara on the following routes Chennai - Mumbai and Chennai - Delhi. Simple reason, Terminal 2 in Mumbai and Terminal 3 in Delhi are just amazing - the ambience, layout and so on.

Next choice in Indigo for my trips ex Chennai to Bangalore, Trichy, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneshwar, Vizag, Coimbatore etc... Whichever destination Vistara doesn't serve Indigo is the only option I take. Like many members had pointed out, Indigo's so called service has deteriorated over the years. Previously they used to serve a tin of Coke, now it's just a small paper cup of Coke (cost cutting I guess). The worst part is perhaps the time you are herded into a bus and even though you reach the aircraft, you are not allowed to de-board and made to wait for close to 10-15 minutes in some cases.

I've also had the opportunity to fly the now defunct Paramount Airways from Madurai to Chennai once on their Embraer E-170. The service was remarkable and the seats were really comfortable.

[invidious]

Consider this a post more for public service than a rant. About 3 months back, my 75+ parents and sister were returning from Udaipur to Bombay. Indigo. There was a loud thud and that was because of an engine failure. Plane had to make an emergency landing in Ahmedabad. Neither the emergency contacts nor the passengers themselves were informed. 6 to 7 hours later they landed with the same flight number but on a different plane. No explanation given. I contacted the civil aviation authorities and received no reply. I had tweeted about it and there wasn’t any traction there either till an aviation journalist stumbled upon it. He works for Economic Times and did an article using our example

https://m.economictimes.com/prime/tr.../104834865.cms

Guess what? A month later - same sector and once again my parents were flying. And this time there wasn’t an engine problem - the flight was just canceled. I booked them on Air India and got them home

I had a lengthy chat with the aviation journalist. Indigo has just become too big to fail and any action by the regulators would result in a major supply demand issue in the aviation sector in India
I told him that had it been Delta or Continental, FAA wouldn’t have given them a “Get out of Jail” card. He did agree.

I think it’s a powder keg. Go Air had far lesser planes and because of the engine issue just couldn’t get their act together. Indigo has been managing the issue by their sheer numbers but it’s going to crack at some point.

It’s a shame Vistara has a thin network because it is excellent.

Anyway, I urge you to think twice before booking Indigo for you or your loved ones. If an alternative is available, spend the dough and buy their safety

[avdhesh15]

Voted Vistara - it's available on 90% of my regular routes and with the premium flyer categories you get access to separate lounges ( eg in Mumbai ), free seats including the premium ones, extra baggage, and do get bumped up once in a while! Always the preferred option for me. It's almost like the jet platinum experience.

[Chetan_Rao]

After years of swearing by them, Indigo has managed to tick me off. I'm not a fussy traveler; get me where I need to be on time and I'm content, and I don't mind paying a little for useful add-ons.

First, they cancelled a flight of mine without any sort of notification last week; to Bombay no less, not some obscure low-traffic town! I only found out because my OCD makes me check schedules one last time the night before the flight. The app just said one of your flights is cancelled, and I can opt for 'plan B' or a refund. I called customer care and made it clear I expect to be put on a alternative flight the same morning as I'm attending to a personal emergency, and their logistics issues are not my problem. After some hand-wringing, they did put me on a flight scheduled a few hours later than originally booked. They had the gall to suggest 'call center usage' fees and that my paid seat selection is non-transferable, until I made it clear I have no intention of paying to fix their bungles, then sit in the back of the plane for added agony. Call-center charges were waived (they actually hold your booking hostage as 'payment pending' otherwise) and an equivalent seat assigned as a 'favor'.

Second, their Fast Forward add-on is now apparently limited to priority check-in and boarding and does not extend to baggage priority at arrivals. Both useless for me, as I use kiosks for bag tags then use bag drop which is quick enough, and opt for front row seat so I can be last-in, first out. This apparently changed in Oct 2023, but since I rarely carry check-in luggage, I didn't know (and Indigo don't really make an effort to clarify the change, unless you read press releases and T&C each time you fly). I'll take responsibility for not double-checking, but it felt a bit underhanded nonetheless.

The two things I most care about when traveling, Indigo managed to mess up for me. I'll be looking for alternatives.