I have read enough negative reviews about Air India. Hence I am trying to judge it as objectively as I can.
I have flown the airline a few times over the last 20 years. My first flight on Air India was way back in Dec 1984/Jan 1985 and I have flown a few times since. Here is
a summary of my opinions of all my travels
1.The most important thing while flying an airline is safety. Unfortunately there is no easy way of asessing safety except by looking at the way things are consistantly handled by the airline. If you find leaking bathrooms, people forgetting your meals, lost or mishandled baggage and know noone who has been spared of it, it is safe to assume that there will be engineering slip ups and safety lapses. Negligence is pervasive. Air India’s biggest problem IMHO seems to be safety because they seem to do something wrong for everyone. I am sure that it reflects on the engineering work too.
- Service in Air India depends not on how the airline trains their people but on the Steward(ess) of the day.
I have had some of the best service during one sector to be replaced by the worst ever in the next sector. The reason of course being that the airline relies on the employees to give the service rather than train them cookie cutter on how to provide an expected service level to the passenger. The problem is that I dont think the airline even knows what Service level means and what the expectations are of an international customer.
- Food is good if you happen to be an indian vegetarian.
However given how inconsistant Air India has been, I cannot extrapolate my experience even here to everyone else.
The planes always took off late but landed on time thanks to favorable wind factors. This seems the case in december with a lot of airlines. I have no clue why.
While none of my baggage was ever mishandled, what I did notice is that almost everyone I knew who travelled Air India had a case of missing baggage. The flight from
Chennai to New York with a flight change at Mumbai, there is only one place where the baggage can be missed and if someone cant even take that care, I wonder what other care the airline would take. This goes back to my first point on safety. If you cant get even something as small as baggage rite, how safe is your airline.
6.Apparently Air India tickets are cheap. However I found
that Malaysia Airlines from US to India was always cheaper
than Air India with far more reliable service. Maybe the NY to Mumbai sector could have been very cheap.