Kingfisher soaring in the Indian skies. Review on Kingfisher Airlines

I often wondered what the fuss was all about - What's so great about Kingfisher airlines? I got various responses – somebody said they have hot airhostesses, someone else said they have great in-flight entertainment while some others just said that it was an experience I should have but couldn’t say why.I was under the impression that Kingfisher had made It’s foray into Indian skies to compete with the low-cost airlines brigade that has taken India by storm. I was mistaken. Never once have they claimed to be low-cost. And they’re proud of it.

SO, I decided to bite the bullet and booked myself on a kingfisher flight from Bangalore to Mumbai. From the way your baggage is handled, the check-in process right down to Dr Mallya’s welcome speech on board – everything was done – King Size.The air-hostesses are pretty without being too in your face. They’re courteous and pleasant. The captain speaks English that can be understood by all and the channel music is not elevator music that gets on the one nerve you have left after a harrowing day.

The food was perfect for the time of flight and the flight entertainment system was good. I would have preferred it if they had more short serials rather than movies which you never end up seeing the end of as the plane lands ahead of time.I got down in Mumbai, happy that I had arrived and frankly Kingfisher had arrived and was there to stay.I was so impressed by this flight that I recently booked another flight with them.Since it was the long Independence Day weekend, we decided to go away on a mini break. The original plan was to go to Hampi but since there were no hotel rooms available, my boyfriend decided to go someplace else. Now I was quite happy that the idea was cancelled.

We live in a gorgeous apartment complex which has a pool, gym, squash court (the works) and I was looking forward to just spending a long lazy weekend at home or by the pool. But No! He wanted to travel! So, without asking me, he booked us on a trip to Vishakapatnam. Vishaka – who?? Exactly. It is a godforsaken place where no one in their right mind goes – especially for a vacation. It is an industrial town and has NOTHING to offer by means of tourism. But it has a good hotel so he booked us there! I was given this surprise a couple days before we left.Now…to explain to you just how far out this place is…. We had to take a 2 hour flight to Chennai and then take a connecting flight of 3 hours to get to Vishakapatnam.

The flight to Chennai was at 06:00 hours(!!!) so we woke up at 4:30am! Took the Kingfisher flight to Chennai and when we landed I thought we would just take a connecting flight immediately… but I was then told by my boyfriend that the connecting flight was at 11 am!! We had a 3 hour wait at Chennai airport! I gritted my teeth but smiled through this…we then decided to sit at the airport lounge and wait out the 3 hours. When we were entering the lounge, the waitress saw our boarding passes and said” Oh! Are they taking off then?” My ears shot up and I asked her what she meant….and she said that no flights had either taken off or landed in Vishakapatnam since the past week because of bad weather!

We ran to the check-in counter and were told that this indeed was true! Now I was boiling mad. I told the Kingfisher airline staff that if they knew the situation, they should never have let us board the plane from Bangalore! They assured us that the plane would take off and that they would come and get us. True to their word…at 10:45, they announced boarding. We boarded and just when the plane was on the runway…ready to take off…we were asked to de-plane! Apparently the weather had taken a bad turn and they wouldn’t take off after all.

So imagine, we had to get off and go back to the lounge and wait another 5 hours as the next plane home was 5 hours later!But I must grudgingly admit that even though it was wrong of Kingfisher to have allowed us to board the plane in Bangalore as they knew we were booked through to Vishakapatnam, they quickly rectified it. They were beyond courteous, they re-imbursed all the money (Bangalore- Chennai- Vizag-Chennai – Bangalore) for both of us and they made sure the Taj (where we had booked a room) didn’t charge us a cancellation fee. They also made us very comfortable in the lounge and looked after us like royalty.I must say kudos to the King of the skies!