Gulf Air

I have read some negative sounding reviews concerning Gulf Air. I have flown Gulf Air and Emirates Airlines several times on the Europe-Bombay sector. Each of these airlines makes a stop either in Bahrain or Dubai in connecting to Bombay. As an airline they are pretty good. Their hospitality and quality of food (esp. for someone with a taste for desi cuisine) is awesome - compared to the european airlines that never tire of serving boiled string beans with no salt or flavor. The other airlines that serve decent food are our desi Air India and PIA - where everything else is 3rd-world-class. The toilets stink, the air in the cabin smells, the plane is 240 years old and seats are torn and the flight attendants are poorly trained, at best. So in a sense, I find Gulf air of the breed of airlines that has the proverbial best of both worlds. Most of their planes are pretty new and very well maintained.

Having said that - the trauma arises on the stop in the middle-east. I know desi crowd is treated like 3rd class there. In the minds of airport officials at Dubia and Bahrain - all brown-skinned people are jamadar or labor class. Not that there is any shame in being labor class - but this group tends to equate desi laborers as sub-humans. And dealing with them at the airports is a huge huge test of your patience if you have a conscience.

Anyhoo, I tend to hold my american passport with the big eagle high up so they will salute me. That makes the experience quite bearable.