Airline experiences and quality

freemanx

excellent bij


spreading democracy

sillylilly

My experiences have been with British Airways, Air India, and Air France on the Philadelphia/New York- Mumbai sectors. The one common theme to European airlines is that they have nice aircraft (Boeing 777s, newer interiors - those little individual TVs, footrests even in economy class, lotsa booze, etc.) on the North America to somewhere-in-Europe sector. From Europe to Mumbai, the planes are the cattle cart variety - older, uglier interiors, more beat up, and generally sucky service. Air India of course maintains its state of royal indifference all the way from NYC to Mumbai. I was once lucky enough to get a meal in which I could identify nothing on the plate (no menu cards either for some reason). When I asked the air-hostess what one particular dish was (I'm vegetarian and it looked non-veg), she said, "Madam, your guess it as good as mine. Try it na once and see if you feel any bones." Then she served us some old oily pappadam and looked me straight in the eye and said "I would not advise you eat that madam, it doesn't look any good."

In India, Jet is good but its airhostesses are very young girls. I feel they are there more for eye candy value than to be effective in any real crisis. I'm sure they'll need the passengers taking care of them if there's a problem.

Alliance Air - I have nightmares about flying this airline. I have a funny story about a flight from Mumbai to Visakhaptnam (Vizag) via Hyderabad. The flight reached Hyd for a 30 minute halt to let passengers off and more on. Suddenly several cops and other serious looking officials came on board and started searching under seats, in the overheard luggsge bins, etc. I figured all the extra security was because some important politician was flying from Hyd to Vizag. Soon, two of the air hostesses were following the cops saying, "He was there, I saw him get on the flight. I saw him. Where is he?" It was getting too mysterious and I asked one of the air hostesses what was up. She looked at me seriously and said "Madam, we have lost a passenger." I was really amused by this and asked her if she thought he fell out of the rickety aircraft while flying from Mumbai. To this she said -"We don't know, madam. We are investigating all possibilities." Unfortunately, several passengers laughed really loudly and she walked away all red in the face. Turns out the errant passenger had been the first off the flight and decided to leg it to the terminal instead of taking the bus that drives you from the plane to the terminal, thus bypassing some checks they had for passengers getting off flights. That's Alliance Air for you - they think its perfectly possible for a passenger to fall out of an aeroplane midair without them knowing anything about it!

-m2-

While researching something else, I came across this site which did a survey of airline seating -- an interesting table giving the pitch (the distance between seats), the width of the seat-cushion, and the maximum recline angle.

Off-hand, it looks like 777's generally have the best economy seats, but airlines still have some discretion as to how many seats they want to cram into the available space.

http://www.smarttravelasia.com/economy.htm