All I can say is that in all my travels - This was one of the worst airlines I have flown with. What makes it worse?
Not just the planes and the way they are maintained but the one ’’main’’ factor that gives this airline the bad name it has, is the staff employed by the airline. Gone are the days when you used to see those lovely saree clad ladies with smiles breaming from ear to ear serving you. These days, what you get is the meal litterally flung at you from about a foot and if you dare to ask the stewardess anything, you could be in for a nasty surprise. Where are those smiles and the pride we once had as being the friendliest people?
My experiences, began about a week ago. Due to fly out from Heathrow to Mumbai on Friday evening at 21:30pm. We got to the airport and were told our flight was cancelled - no other explanation (someone said NRIs are treated better - think again mate - skin colour brown and speak with a slightly Indian accent and you get discreminated against - ragardless!!!). After speaking to a friend who works at Heathrow we found out that the 12noon flight to New York had developed a fault, and to keep the Goras happy, they cancelled our flight and sent that plane to New York. We were then sent packing until the following day - when we were finally flown at 15:30pm. We knew that because of the delay we were going to miss our connecting flight, despite several requests to the head stewardess, we were offered no help.
As expected we missed our connecting flight to Porbander and went to the Air India office and it took almost an hour to persuade the guy at the office that we needed to be put up in a hotel until we caught a flight that evening (which was to Rajkot and not Porbander - the best we could do). Guess what, they put us up in a hotel and gave us vouchers for a meal and one drink - but mineral water was not included or counted as a drink. We wanted to make a call to inform our relatives that we would be arriving late in the night - but the hotel refused as Air India had not given us the voucher!! VOUCHERS? for every single item? IT ONLY HAPPENS IN INDIA!
I won’t bore you with details of the actual flight and the service, suffice to say it did not meet the standards expected of a national carrier.
Save your money, there are a lot of other airlines that fly cheaper and the service is better than Air India.
I would throw up a challange to the board of directors of the airline and ask them that if they have even the slightest of respect for India and it’s people, then make Air India the pride of this country again.