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Flew Air India on the BOM-DEL sector: Surprisingly pleasant experience!

8th October 2024, 09:04 by Ananth Iyer

A friend who was on the Vistara flight which was supposed to depart 15 minutes prior actually got delayed by close to 40 minutes and had to hold even more while landing!

BHPian porsche_guy recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Sector: BOM-DEL
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER
Remarks: Ex-etihad aircraft leased for a short time by AI until the new order wide bodies arrive in numbers

With an impending BOM-DEL sector in a circuit tour this month, had the option to either fly Vistara for the last time or take a gamble and fly Air India to potentially experience a new product. After much deliberation, decided to go through the latter. Now remember until end of August, this flight was operated by an A350 which was the first reason I wanted to fly AI, but it seems that September onwards that aircraft has been delegated to the newly launched DEL-LHR runs.

While checking in and selecting my seat, noticed that it had a 3-4-3 seating configuration making sure that my gamble had paid off and this would be the newer leased aircraft, and not the legacy ones which have 3-3-3 seating instead.

The check-in process at Mumbai T2 went smoothly enough with not much in the way of crowds being a late afternoon flight. Got to experience the Adani lounge as well which was also fairly decent.

Coming to the flight itself, being a domestic widebody, the boarding usually happens only via the far off Gate 53 and this time we had the VT-AEO airship on duty named 'Tvisha'.

Right off the bat, the interiors are a massive upgrade from the legacy fleet and the seats have a nice brown and grey theme going on. Legroom was decent and the seats were fairly supportive with an adjustable headrest with wings which one can fold to support your head when taking naps.

Pushback happened a good 20 min late with further congestion and weather delaying the takeoff by 40 minutes.

Once up in the air, I fired up the IFE which was actually quite basic. There are a good selection of movies, music and TV shows but the number of them is quite limited. The touchscreen is also the old resistive type which takes a good amount of effort to operate without the remote. Would have loved to track the flight real-time as well. The seats themselves have good legroom and there's a nifty pocket on the seatback as well to store small stuff like your phone or wallet too. Another mention I would make is for the superb ambient lighting which feels soothing and switches between white, yellow, orange and purple depending on what stage of the flight one is in.

Meal service included two vegetarian and one non vegetarian option- pretty good and also somewhat surprising giving my other recent AI flights only had a small snack with just a single option. Quality of the food served was quite decent and there were no complaints there.

Delhi that day, had tons of traffic issues which led us to be kept in holding for close to half an hour more. Landing was smooth enough and were given coordinates to take a turn back to cross over via the elevated taxiway. After this we were put on a hold indefinitely with no gate assigned which just further added to our annoyance. Finally after another 15-20 minutes we were asked to turn back and given another gate on the opposite side of the airport.

Disembarking was the usual stuffy affair but my checked-in bag did take a good chunk of time to arrive.

Overall, I'd rank it as a good flight. The delays were not within the crew's control and to their credit, they kept us updated regularly and transparently as well. We were also provided a pillow which was again unique on a domestic economy sector. The aircraft did feel a bit tired in some places but given it is almost a decade since it entered service, I don't have much to complain.

Finally, a friend who was on the aforementioned Vistara flight which was supposed to depart 15 minutes prior actually got delayed by close to 40 minutes and had to hold even more while landing! The meals served were also exactly the same on both the flights, but I guess that shouldn't come as a surprise given both are heading for a merger soon enough.

Will I fly AI again? Well, I already have two more flights planned with them for later this month. I sure hope a good chunk of the Vistara service levels and dynamism comes here and not the other way around.

Attaching some picture below:

A fairly decent meal