Air Travel With Air India Experience

Recently I had to travel from Kolkata to San Francisco via New Delhi, New York City and return via Los Angeles and Frankfurt, pretty much I covered the globe twice in eight days with 4 days or actual work / fun. Here is my experience in brief.

In Flight Hospitality & Food

I found Air India on-flight staff very courteous and friendly. The food was good and ample. Overall there was a warmth in behavior that I have not found in any other airlines, and I have traveled in many airlines, both international and domestic (in USA and India). In terms of hospitality, Singapore Airlines comes a close second, followed by Thai Airlines and Lufthansa. British Airways is absolutely horrible (for non-caucasians) in my experience, but I digress.

Timeliness

Air India needs to improve on timeliness. The return flight was delayed for 2 hours by two errant passengers in club class whose entertainment system was not working! The captain should have acted sooner and had them de-planed in Los Angeles, instead of carrying those idiots to Franfurt before de-planing them. I felt the airlines staff was being too nice to them at the expense of rest of us. Otherwise the flights were more or less on time. The ticket mentioned gate 123. Nobody, not even the flight crew, knew an hour before the flight whether it was 123A or 123B!

Condition of aircraft

The flight from New Delhi to New York city was by Boeing 777, which was absolutely fabulous and in great condition. Every seat had a large flat-screen display with private screening of movies and large assortment of games.
The flight back from Los Angeles to New Delhi via Frankfurt was on a loaned Boeing 747-400 from Malaysia Airlines. Some components were literally held together by a duct-tape. Many seat handles were broken and many entertainment system wasn’t working. Air India should definitely focus on increasing its fleet and not go for short term leases. I think the problem lies in its strategy.

How Air India Can Be Financially Viable & Improve

I think the crux of the problem lies in the large number of flights it has in every sector it covers. For example, I was told by a stewardess that Air India has daily flights from New Delhi to New York city as well as flights for 6 days every week from Newark to New Delhi! Newark is very close to JFK Airport in New York city. This is clearly an overkill. Most of their flights have lots of empty seats. The flight to JFK and from LAX to Delhi was almost half empty!

Air India should reduce the number of flights and focus more on quality rather than quantity. Its resources are currently spread too thin.

Summary

I was pretty happy traveling by Air India and will definitely consider it when traveling to New York city or east coast in general. For west coast Singapore airlines remains my favorite, closely followed by Thai Airlines.

PS. I have traveling experience with the following Airlines:
Singapore Airlines, Air India, British Airlines (sucks unless you are caucasian), Lufthansa, American Airlines, United, Jet Airways, Sahara, Thai Airlines, China Airlines, South West Airlines, Delta Airlines, Indian Airlines etc.