Review of Air India flight New Delhi → Bangkok in Economy

Introduction

Hello,

Given that my wife and me usually plan a separate trip every year, I decided to go ahead to my usual destination down in Southeast Asia, while my wife fancied a trip to the Mediterranean for herself. As competition becomes fiercer by the year down to Thailand from Europe, it opens a lot of possibilities and cheap prices.

Given that there are plentiful of direct flights to Bangkok from Amsterdam both flown by KLM & EVA Air, you also have plentiful of one stop connections with many airliners and given that Air India, which I was skeptical to book at first, offered a very cheap one-way fare to Bangkok with an excellent stopover time in New Delhi, I couldn't ignore this ticket. The return was with THAI via Stockholm and resulted in a total fare of 950 EUR in both directions with luggage (without domestic flights). KLM was charging 1000 EUR without cabin luggage and EVA Air unfortunately did not fly on the days I needed them to.

Connecting through New Delhi to Bangkok

After arriving in New Delhi from my flight from Amsterdam, I had about three hours for my connection to Bangkok. I'm glad there were just a very few passengers from my flight and the one from Paris that were actually connecting internationally as the entire procedure to connect through New Delhi is probably the most tedious one I've witnessed.

With just a very few people connecting through (I didn't see more than twelve different people) it took about a solid hour to clear all formalities and securities. In the time to get back to the terminal, my boarding pass has been checked by five or six different people who all seem to be suspicious of those who were connecting and security itself took the longest of all where they were requesting us to literally unpack all electronic devices and cables…… Of course 95% of the bags had to be searched again as they did found a cable somewhere again…..

Once security was done, there was once again a lady asking for my boarding pass to verify with quite an unpolite tone in her voice. She took my boarding pass to write information in some kind of logbook for some unknown reason before giving it back to me.

As a solid hour had past now from the moment I disembarked the aircraft, I was finally in terminal three dropped right in front of some duty free. Some thing that has been notorious with so many airports and I absolutely hate.  I also do not understand why those shops are pretty much similar to any other airport in any other country. 

Forgetting about the transit hassle and the first part where one had to pass the Duty Free, I found terminal three to be quite a good terminal with plenty of eateries and shop and with a modern feel to it. 

The only odd regulation, which is probably something demanded by the government, is that you will need to go to a self kiosk as a foreigner to scan your passport to gain access to New Delhi's WiFi. The system to receive your code is self-explanatory, but I found only two of those kiosks in my entire stay and I can't understand one wants to wait for more than fifteen minutes (on busier days) to retrieve a WiFi password as it took about five minutes for me to get one given the short line.

Once I obtained my WiFi Access, I made my way up to the upper floor to proceed to the Encalm Lounge as that was the lounge that was applicable for me given my priority pass.

Before reaching the lounge, I was kind of shocked by the long line in front of the Encalm Lounge and was re-considering my option to proceed to this lounge given the line. In the end it took about another thirty minutes or so to be checked into the lounge and was pleasantly surprised that the lounge itself wasn't overly crowded in certain area's. For some reason most of the travellers were crowding around the food section, while you had plenty of quiet seating available in the aft corners.

To return to those long queus of getting into the lounge, this was mainly due to the effect that check-in process was quite slow and some Indians kept negotiating for some weird reason about the entrance fee.

Possibility for some food was plentiful with most items being the Indian cuisine. They also had two cooking stations with one of them providing dosa's, while I can't recall the other one.

My apologies for the rushed pictures as the food area was really crowded with queus for everything, so I didn't really want to obstruct anyone that was actually hungry and/or did not liked to be photographed as it was quite impossible for me to photograph any food without someone being in the picture.

Some more.

This was probably the western section with Yoghurt, Cereal, Veggies & Fruit mixed with some Indian products.

Coffee, Tea & Water was available to be picked up by yourself, but if you fancied some soft or alcoholic drinks, you had to visit the bar lady who would serve you a drink. Oddly enough they do serve you hard liquor and wine, but beer was not available. 

Knowing that beer was not served, I asked the lady for a Ginger Ale which was handed to me in a can. The lady never bothered to ask me whether I'd like to have a glass and/or some ice.

As I wasn't really that hungry, my choice for now was as below.

Given that my flight would depart from Gate 19B, I decided to leave the lounge a tad early as I wasn't really familiar with the airport and I wanted to have some time to do some more exploring of New Delhi's terminal myself. The terminal did not feel crowded at all, had plenty of seating around the gates and had plenty of natural sunlight.

The only problem I had was that the terminal itself is quite unfriendly of spotting any aircraft as my ride was blocked by both the windows and the jetbridge as you can see below, though our ride would be performed by VT-EXH.

VT-EXH is a 6.5 year old Airbus A320neo that has solely been flying for Air India as of December 2017 and is powered by 2 CFM Leap 1A26 Engines and can carry up to 162 passengers. (12 in J, 150 in Y). 

A Boeing 787 of Vistara was parked next to it with an unknown destination.

With about five minutes to our scheduled departure, the flight crew made their way to the aircraft who seemed to have a proper long chat with ground staff prior to that. Now I don't want to judge, but this felt more like they were more busy with entertaining themselves and their colleagues before getting to work as I already witnessed the fuel truck pulling away minutes ahead and luggage being loaded on the plane.

Given that I had plenty of time to start wondering around, I was wondering if any Indian reader could explain to me the reasoning behind the yellowish-brownish colours of the seating area at the gates? Purely out of my decorative mind, I would probably choose this colour as one of the last.

Eventually boarding was called about five minutes past our scheduled departure time and luckily enough it went with a decent pace as pushback would only be engaged about 25 minutes past our scheduled departure time. Upon embarking the aircraft, we were greeted  by one of the flight attendants.

Given that we had about another four hour flight to Bangkok and Air India charged only 22 EUR for an emergency exit, I decided to take them up on that offer and book myself an emergency exit as I didn't really do my research regarding the legroom situation with Air India.

Legroom was obviously fine for an emergency exit as one could tell, but the seat itself was rather limited. No IFE, No Magazines or any other entertainment as WiFi was also not installed on the aircraft.

The view of my seat however was not too shabby and pushback like said before engaged about 25 minutes past our scheduled departure time. Upon the pushback, one of the flight attendants came by to give us a brief instruction on Air India's procedure and how to open the door once asked by one of the flight crew member to do so in case of an emergency.

Expecting a short taxi for our departure runway, we were kindly disappointed again as somehow in those three hours, New Delhi shifted operations to opposite directions and we've had quite a ride to the other side.

About 40 minutes or so we were finally rolling for departure in a very hazy New Delhi.

Once on a safer altitude, I decided to check whether this table was cleaner and better comparing it to my first flight on their 787 and luckily enough it was better on all fronts. The only downside was that this table was not foldable in case you fancied some more space and just needed a spot for your cup to go.

Also the literature in front of my seat was basically a safety card and sickbag, so I didn't bother to take a photo of that.

View of the cabin.

Once again the same idea as my previous flight was enhanced were flight attendants were serving us drinks well ahead of our food service. They were however more generous with their volume of alcohol, however the drinking service took them more than two hours to complete with the sole reason being that multiple passengers kept ringing the bell for assistance to get a refill on the drink, while the passengers in the aft were still waiting to be served for their first. I really think Air India should adress this issue by forcing flight attendants first to provide everyone with their first drinks before handing out drinks as a refill. 

As you can see I obted for a glass of water, white wine and received the same crunchy corn I did on my first flight.

By the time I received my main meal, we were flying around Bangladesh/Myanmar, so one could have imagined how long it took them to serve the drinks. Once again, no drinks were served anymore other than coffee or tea after the meal. 

No options were given and we were all handed a vegetarian option with paneer in some cury with rice and cauliflower as main meal. One could also find a bottle of water, butter, bun, Dahi and some chocolate dessert sides.

Once again the food did not disappoint and was quite delicious. The dahi was definitely a nice balance to the curry flavours. All I wished for was to have an additional drink next to my food.

By now we were well into Myanmar's airspace. A country I would love to visit once again like I did in 2018, but is unfortunately facing some civil war/unrest. 

Not much went on through our flight anymore and we touched down in Bangkok about 25 minutes past our scheduled arrival time with a smooth touchdown.

While being parked next to this Airbus A330-300 of China Airlines that would depart as CI832 to Taipei. A flight I took about 6 months ago.

Knowing the struggles and long queus in Suvarnabhumi like I had last november, it seems that Bangkok really stepped up their game as there were no queus at all for border control and luggage itself did not take more than a solid five minutes to be on belt. (Five minutes past border control and border control itself took no more than two minutes).

Thanks for stoppign by and see you on the next journey!