Flew from Mumbai to NY and Chicago to Mumbai by Air-India direct flights.

The flight from Mumbai to NY was uneventful and as good as flying anyother airline. The crew, though wouldn’t bend backwards to serve you was courteous enough. The food was good. The flight departed about 15 min late and arrived about 20 min late. But I guess thats not too bad from other airline records.

The return flight was well OK too, except for a couple of high points. As the aircraft rotated (aircraft lingo for nose pulling up for takeoff), there was a loud bang. As the passengers let out anxious ’’what the hell’’s, it was a galley tray, not properly secured, falling out. Otherwise the flight was pretty decent.

This flight operated on the CHI-LHR-DEL-BOM route and At that time, there were airspace restrictions for indian carriers over Pakistan and at that time, there were airspace restrictions for indian carriers over Pakistan. As a result the flight flew agonisingly close to mumbai and flew on to delhi. We had a stopover for 40 min and then took off for mumbai. So the xtra flying time was irritating but I guess the airline could not have helped it. The other problem was that when indians fly out ... they take care to be clean and disciplined but when they are flying back home they seem to forget all civilities.
 
This flight had a lot of expats and by the time we reached delhi, the aircraft was so littered ... Again I guess this cannot be attributed to the airline. After getting off at mumbai, I figured that 1 of my luggage was missing. 3 days later it was traced at DEL (for some reason it was offloaded at DEL).

But having said all this, there are a lot of pros, points which i guess matter more than glamour ...
1. You get some real good deals. At times its almost 10% cheaper than other airlines
2. If you are flying home from north america, you can’t beat the convenience of a direct flight to BOM/DEL (Just a 45-60 min stop at LHR for refuelling)

Cons:
1. If you fly for the glamour of flying ... don’t except much
2. The ticketing is best sourced from an agent. Don’t even try to get involved with the airline directly.
3. The website absolutely sucks. It looks more like the summer project of a student dabbling in programming.

Moral: give it a try ... its not that bad

No. of times flown on this Airlines:	Between 1 - 3
Class flown most frequently:	Economy Class