After hearing a lot about direct Air India flight from Delhi to San Francisco, I opted the same for my recent visit to Bay area. Before this visit I have majorly used Emirates & All Nippon. In this post I have tried to share my thoughts about why direct Air India flight is not suitable for me and I would let you decide what makes sense for your use-cases.
I believe that living shorter life with good health & peace is better than having long life with sufferings or boredom. Same applies to these long flights. Typically flights from India to US take 22-24 hrs and this direct Air India flight takes 16 hrs. It saves pretty good time saving for you. But are you fine to fly in a flight which has no entertainment system for 16 hours? Mine entertainment system was not working in the flight - screen was working without audio, which is equivalent to have to entertainment system. I thought headphone with me is not working, so requested the crew member to give me another headset to try. The guy asked for 5 minutes to get back and he never returned back with a solution and he didn’t even bother to say that some of the systems on flight are not working. In few minutes I could make out as it was happening with others around me. The more frustrating part was that situation was same on return flight after 3 weeks. Does it mean - all Air India planes have this issue and they don’t even want to fix it or something else. The good part was that I was lucky to have a seat where this system was working. But in future should I rely on my good-luck, when I have option to chose other flights? Certainly there is a workaround to have some content on your iPAD and carry it with you during the flight, but why would I want to carry a device specifically to deal with this situation?
Above incidents are not only about non-working entertainment systems but also about the seriousness of the organization to deal with this situation. On top of that crew members don’t really bother about these issues and rude at times (I saw one of the crew member responding rudely to an old lady who raised strong concerns about the same).
On Air India flight, you can see faces of the staff when they serve food or beverages and after that nobody really cares if you press button for their attention. Food on the flight is average. SF to Delhi flight had better food in comparison to what you get while flying from Delhi to San Francisco.
Let’s also talk about timings - Although the flight is direct and it takes 16 hrs but it takes out 2 days from your schedule. Flight timing from San Francisco is 11:30am, which essentially means you start at around 7:30am from hotel and it reaches Delhi on Sunday 4pm. So you can’t really plan anything else on these 2 days. Now point is - how does this time save helping you and especially when you have to compromise on service, food & entertainment? btw, I also noticed open bags on luggage belt, which was shocking. luckily my bags were intact, but I also see people fearing about loss of their stuff from bags.
On a positive note, I hear good things about leg space in Air India flight. This is not really a factor for me, as I get enough leg space in Emirates as well as All Nippon. I know lot of folks who love these direct flights by Air India and would like to know your viewpoint through comment below.
While I might not opt Air India flight in future, here are some advantages of this flight -
1. Saves time and you don't have to get down on any airport for changing flight.
2. There is negligible probability of luggage loss or delay in getting luggage at your destination.
If you liked this post and found it helpful, I would request you to follow these things when traveling -
1. Manage your waste well and don’t litter Use dustbins.
2. Tell us if you went to a place and found it hard to locate a dustbin.
3. Avoid bottle waters in hills. Usually you get clean water in hills and water bottles create lot of mess in our ecosystem.
4. Say big no to plastic and avoid those unhealthy snacks packed in plastic bags. Rather buy fruits.
5. Don't play loud blaring music in forests of jungle camps. You are a guest in that ecosystem and disturbing the locals (humans and animals) is not polite
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