India's very own - Air Sahara. Review on JetLite

Hi,

I have been traveling by Air Sahara for last 3 years till now and I have taken more than 30 flights or so for destinations such as Chennai, Dibrugarh, Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar, Delhi, Bangalore etc. I am writing this review after a good amount on experience on Air Sahara.

Let me talk about various components one by one.

Punctuality:

On certain sectors where the number of Sahara flights is less you will see often rescheduling / delays. Delays up to 1 hour are most common but and you will come across frequently however rescheduling is not so common.

And if by chance your flight gets cancelled, the hotel arrangements are not good. Once I was flying from Chennai to Delhi and due to the fog the aircraft could not land at Delhi and was diverted to Bombay. I had to wait for almost 2 hours outside the Airport before I was transferred to a hotel. The hotel was so so and the biggest trouble was I was told to share my room with a co passenger of mine, who was a complete stranger. I somehow managed it but it was a big discomfort.

The Transfer Coaches:

The transfer coaches are of good quality and have a low floor for easy embarking and disembarking. All the coaches are generally air-conditioned irrespective of your class of travel unlike Indian Airlines where the transfer coaches are Non A/C for economy class passengers.

The check-in counters / ground services:

The quality of service at the check-in counters or helpdesk is quite good. Staff manning these counters will normally wear a nice smile and will greet you nicely. The staff is helpful and caring. They offer you a small packet of sweets whenever you check in. although I have seen altercations between people and staff on these counters 2 -3 times but most of the times it has to do something with the policy of Airline like for example handling of the expires super sixer ticket etc.

The Cleanliness:

The Aircrafts of Air Sahara are generally neat and clean. Sometimes you may encounter a restroom which is kind of overused and will find the floor etc. completely in mess. This is quite dependent on users also.

The Aircraft Age:

Normally the Aircrafts of Sahara are old ones, mostly from European airlines, occasionally you will find that the overhead call bell for hostess or the reading light is not working.

In Flight Entertainment:

Air Sahara is the first domestic airline to offer in-flight entertainment (on selected sectors only). Although, the package is basic and limited to audio entertainment only, but it is still better than having absolutely nothing.

Food / Drinks:

The best part of Air Sahara?s onboard catering service is the welcome drink they offer when you board the plane. It is generally lime water of mango panna. The food is of good quality and is of generally three varieties viz. Continental, and two types regional food. (eg: On a Delhi - Chennai flight, Continental, North India and South India food is available) In addition to this, you can ask for a low calorie meals or special meals for diabetes patients, however the availability is limited.

Cabin Crew:

The cabin crew or Air Sahara is very helpful, young and agile but not that professional. I have often seen the flight stewards and air hostesses behaving like college students among themselves. Another review on Air Sahara by cooldude04 on Mouth Shut mentions that ?It seemed that one of the air stewards was flirting an air hostess which was very visible?. I don?t know whether ?Flirting? is the right word or not but yes it is true that the sometimes cabin crew members of Air Sahara leave this kind of impression.

Bid ?n? Win:

First let me tell you what is ?Bid ?N? Win?.

While flying, the cabin crew distributes Bid ?N? Win catalogs and coupon to each passenger. The catalog contains pictures, brief description, Market Price and the Minimum reserved Price for each of the products listed.

All the products are divided into several categories and depending on category, 1 to 4 items are offered from each category in a flight. For any item you like, you have to fill its code in the bidding coupon and the price you want to pay for that product. Your coupon will be collected by the cabin crew.

If your price offered by you in maximum or among the highest (in case of more than one product are on offer in a category) you will be declared the winner of the bid and you can collect the desired product on arrival, after making the payment in cash. (No Credit Cards Please)

The results are declared just before landing. It?s optional to participate in this event and you can bid for one product only at a time. In India, Air Sahara is the only airline to offer such scheme.

The Bid ?n? Win scheme is not so good now as it used to be in the earlier days. The prices have been hiked and there is no transparency in the process. I used to enjoy it a lot and had some good deals for 5 ? 6 times. Quite sometime (may be a year or so) Air Sahara has increased the minimum bid prices in all the categories which makes these schemes somewhat unattractive. Also I have noticed that this scheme is misused by the cabin crew to get the products for themselves. I have seen this once myself.

All of you who have seen bidding on Air Sahara will be able to figure how this misuse is done. Probably you have noticed this that sometimes the cabin crew is not able to locate the winner of the bid in the whole flight! How they can? Because there is no such person on the flight. I think the cabin crew conducting the Bid ?n? Win sometimes put their bid coupons with some dummy names for the seats which are vacant.

At the end of the flight, they walk down with the winning letter and collect the products from counters. Also let me point out that the delivery process at the Bid ?n? Win counters is totally mismanaged and chaotic one and you have to literally fight to collect your product. It?s just like a queue at a government office. If a product is good, it will always be out of stock. Air Sahara will offer to ship that product to your mailing address, but I don?t know how reliable that facility is.

To sum up, I will say that Air Sahara is a very good airline to fly with and it?s very Indian in character. There's a lot of room for improvement too.