Jun 10, 2008 08:07 PM
10928 Views
Just returned from a trip to India and flew Continental's non-stop flight Newark-Mumbai-Newark in BusinessFirst. It was a decent experience. Continental uses a Boeing 777 for this route. The planes looked quite new but unfortunately, they don't have full flat beds in business class - they have the old style cradle seats which is out of date as most airlines are installing full flat beds in business class.
The seats are quite wide however, and I was able to snatch a few short cat-naps during the flight. Food was OK, they had 3 choices (indian non-veg, Western non-veg, and Indian veg) for dinner and 2 choices (Western non-veg and Indian veg) for the breakfast serving, but the food itself was a little on the tasteless side. By contrast, Jet and Delta both have much better food and also a wider range of offerings.
There is a nice business lounge at Newark. The one in Mumbai is horrific, but that's to be expected since multiple airlines are being forced to share lounges in view of the work going on at Mumbai airport. Going to India, the plane had a state of the art IFE, with AVOD, loads of movies and TV programs to choose from and the ability to create your own custom jukebox. However, on the return flight, they were using a slightly older Boeing 777 and that did not have AVOD, just the old-style channels.
Where Continental scores is punctuality and ground handling. Going to India, we were delayed by one hour but that was because of excessive congestion at Mumbai airport which forced our place to basically do aerial laps around the airport for an hour as they could not get ATC clearance to land. Coming back, we left half an hour late due to heavy rain, but still made up time and landed 10 minutes early in Newark. Ground handling is super-efficient at both destinations and I got my baggage very fast both ways (guess the Priority tag also helps). So I would say that overall, Continental is a safe, reliable option for flying non-stop to India. However, the lack of full flat beds in business class and not so great food and IFE are to my mind, significant disadvantages vis-a-vis some of their competitors. Delta has now introduced full flat beds on their non-stop flight to Mumbai and that might be the better option (at least until Jet introduces their non-stop flight).
