Seasoned traveler here, usual sectors are NA -LA- Africa- Asia Pac.
Traveled on NYC- BOM-MAA, ORD - BOM- MAA, SIN-MAA, last year and had a very tough time bordering on just screaming myself to death.
Last year was first after many years of traveling LH, BA, SIN on these sectors.
Counter experience - horrendous, the staff are obviously chosen from the lower echelons of life. So much so that many are just plain thugs. I prefer aisle seats and on requesting an aisle seat was told the plane was full. Later on I realized this was horse pucky as there were many aisle seats that were vacant. The counter staff are just plain bored and inefficient. After all customer service is something they care little about.
The Boarding experience: JFK just opened a new fish market selling discount fish, the rush is thus justified.
The aircraft and flight experience - The quality of this airline is seriously circumspect, air hostesses who are rude, outright inefficient, hell bent on abusing you for just about anything. Ask for some more water during a meal be prepared to pay for it by listening to some abuse, ask for some blankets, get abused, request a drink or some more tea get abused or better still wait for eternity as some hostesses pretend to forget and go back and sit down. The aircraft seemed to be from a Jules Verne novel. The seat next to me was smelling of vomit and the lady sitting there was mighty embarrassed. There was this one passenger who added to my misery by removing another passenger’s cabin baggage from the storage bins as he was sitting in that aisle and his bags took precedence. The poor lady was just amazed by his rudeness. Next in this play, the airhostess comes in and blasts the lady for not boarding fast enough, an older gentleman steps in and explains the happenings, the air hostess then made her gravest mistake, she argued with the rude passenger who then went on to violently abuse her. She abused him back in the filthiest of language.
We then took off and all the children were too disgusted to enjoy the flight.
Arrival - Sans bags, no clue where it went. No one cared. Got a phone call 2 weeks later and on picking them up were covered with dust/dirt.
If you ask me Apartheid era SAA was much better than freedom filled Air India, it’s such a horrendous experience, why would anyone pay for this treatment is astonishing, company pays for me but still its torture.
The last straw was the aforementioned trip, I have now made even a business case to my company to prevent any further AI bookings irrespective of price.
But in all fairness, if you are a budget traveler without expectations and just hit by the penny then this is definitely the airline for you.It is the only airline that will get you for point A to point B with maximum irritation.