Flew Air India business class post the Tata takeover: My key takeaways

All seats in Business Class had a soft pillow placed on them, and a 500ml water bottle was also put in the seat back pockets.

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I flew on Air India's Business Class today for the first time after Tata's takeover and also after Vistara merger, thought I'll share my experience.

I flew from Mumbai to Jodhpur. The Aircraft was an Airbus A320neo, registered VT-CID. I had flown this very aircraft in the same very seat on the same very route earlier in 2019 as well. It was still in the old Air India 2-Class interior and had not been reconfigured yet. Air India is in process of refurbishing its old A320 neos, and the first one will be done soon. The reconfiguration process will be done alongside the 6 year heavy maintenance checks, and as the heavy maintenance checks take time, the aircrafts will also be repainted to the new livery.

We boarded via stairs even though the aircraft was on a gate which had the jet bridge attached. The reason for this was that the aircraft's last flight was an international flight and therefore the jet bridge was connected to the international portion of the terminal.

The one thing that could've been better here in my opinion was that a separate coach should've been used to transport business class passengers when boarding started and priority boarding was to take place. Instead of that, they put business class passengers in the same fully loaded coach as others, when Jodhpur Airport was using coaches a while back, Business always had separate coaches. A point to note is the flight was fully booked in economy, and there was only one seat empty in business.

All seats in Business Class had a soft pillow placed on them, and a 500ml water bottle was also put in the seat back pockets. I was seated in 3F.

Shortly after boarding, Orange juice was served, just like how it was even in pre-Tata Days.

After this, hot towels were offered to all passengers, post which the food menu was given out and our preferences were noted down, this included our beverage choices as well.

When I had flown last AI business in 2019(not counting the 2021 flight as circumstances were different), no food choice was available, so Tata has clearly worked here.

Anyways, moving on, we took off slightly late, at 9:46am, which was 31 mins late, but that's an acceptable amount of time considering the congestion at CSMIA. We covered all of it during our flight, and landed 6 mins before time. Air India has worked extremely hard to improve its on-time performance, and since Tata's takeover, out of the 25 or so flights I've taken with them, only 1 or 2 were delayed, and the delay was mostly due to last minute aircraft swaps.

I was seated next to an off-duty Air India pilot and we had a nice chat during the flight. He had flown this route many times and was fully familiar with it. He is trained on the A320 family and is very likely going to be transitioning to the 787 fleet once the new 787s start arriving.

The meal service begun shortly after takeoff, and the tables were covered with a cloth before the meals were served, this was a welcome change.

The meal was served warm, and I was fully impressed with the improvement, however it wasn't exactly as described in the menu, but nothing bad either, the main difference was that there was a potato cutlet instead of chicken sausage and has browns. The Spinach Omelette and croissant were good, and the fruits were fresh. I would rate the meal 8/10.

The coffee was served 5 minutes after the meal, nothing much to write home about it.

Shortly after we begun our descent into Jodhpur, we were served hot towels again. Landing was smooth and we had a before time arrival.

I faced an issue of priority baggage arriving after the standard baggage though, or else could have saved 5-7 minutes.

Overall I would rate the flight a 9/10, and I can definitely say that Air India has come a long way since Tata has taken over, although there is still room for improvement, I am optimistic that it will improve in the next 2-3 years.

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