I don’t know many people who actually fly Air India out of choice anymore. I wouldn’t say that there is a huge difference in service between most airlines coach class but unless I really have to I would always opt to fly by another airlines.
I have travelled by Air India once. I travelled atleast 15 years ago when I was younger. The aircraft itself was ok. The staff were not particularly pleasant but no coach class airline staff apart from Singapore Airlines are any better. The food was nothing to write home about.
What really got me thought was that during the nine hour flight they served drinks twice. There wasn’t a trolley but the air hostess came out with cups filled with 2/3 different drinks and you picked one. There was little choice and it just looked unprofessional. I strongly suspect that the bulk of the drinks trolley makes it back to the airplane staff’s own houses.
The in-flight radio was bad. The state of the toilets after about 4 hours into the flight was abominable. Thats probably more due to the fact that unfortunately many Indians do not know how to use and leave airplane toilets.
The staff although not particularly courteous treated Indians with a sort of disdain and treated the non-Indian or the indian living abroad a lot better. You see this on western airlines but for an Indian national carrier to behave this way is simply not on.
To top it all I had to sit through Aradhna both on the outwards and the return journey. I have travelled Air India again on an internal flight from Madras to Bombay and I was reasonably happy with the flight then. It was however much shorter. Whether I will fly again with them in the future is doubtful when you have other carriers flying similar routes with better on-board facilities and better food and drink.