I have flown Air India occasionally in the past. once to singapore, on a plane that rattled during takeoff and then once while traveling to Taipei where I switched flights in Bangkok - as the AI flight to Bangkok was delayed, I had the misfortune of misplacing my baggage for a full 2 days. I did have a fun time shopping for underwear in taipei's night markets !
With these none too happy experience in the flashback, when the travel from hyderabad to newark via Air India was trhrust open me leaving me no choice i was filled with pessimism , and I am going to tell you how all my worst fears came true !
It was a reasonably good start , AI hyd to mumbai was in the smaller 737 aircraft and zero onboard entertainment and no drinks either. Upon reaching mumbai at 2 in the night I found out to my horror that lounge accomodation sleeping in the chairs in the lobby, they did not have a transit hotel.after spending the whole night without much sleep and wandering in the boring corridors, the flight to newark started at 9:30 in the morning - a delay of 2 hours. the flight attendant immediately announced "wee appoologieeese phor this delay" which sounded more like "we care a damn" :-). By the way i also found out that I was going via Paris. It seems non-stop meeannt that you cant get off the plane.
To cut a long story short it was a long and boring flight , unlike other airlines, there are no personal lcd+ video on demand. I had a daash of Johnny walker that they were serving to calm my nerves, only for a short time though. the food during lunch gave me a bad stomach.
After finishing immigration in Newark Collecting the baggage was a loong wait, after waiting for an houur, in my mind i was seeing my luggage arrive in Ethiopia or maybe Madagascar , an old gentle man who had an onward flight to Atlanta had already; missed his flight because of the delay.
As i was giving up , i saw the red suitcase and the small blue one that i was waiting for. I picked up my bags and fled...
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I have ..33a round trip ticket by the way and will have to got through this again when I go back to india in november.
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1 comment:
Well said.
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