Jan 2006

My expectations were very low to begin with. I was expecting a "Disco Stu", 70’s run down aircraft with orange and yellow seats and rude flight attendants. To my amazement the flight attendant who greeted us at the door of the aircraft was all smiles and the plane did not seem that old. The seats were standard blue color and I noticed personal entertainment screens behind every seat. I was relieved.

The plane had 3x4x3 configuration having 10 seats per row in the economy section. I quickly found my wife and son and put away my luggage. There was another passenger in our section of the four seats. He had already introduce himself to my wife and son. I assumed he was going to Germany. I decided to take the aisle seat and the other elderly gentleman had the other aisle seat. My wife and son were in the middle. As we settled in, he introduced himself as Jim, he was from Oklahoma and he said he was going to India for the first time. He seemed like a down to earth person from the south, talked a lot and barely fit in his seat. He noticed one of the flight attendant who was extremely skinny (sort of like alley Mcbeal) and commented that he could tell right away she was not an American (obviously because of her weight, it was not a racist comment).

We were offered orange juice before the take off, most of the flight attendants were quiet responsive and courteous. We took off around 11:15am after over 4 hours of delays.

During or soon after the take off they showed a safety video at the end of which they had a how to section on using the “toilets”.

To my knowledge Air India is the only airline that does this because the soon after the take off lavatories won’t pass a third world standard in some of the cases. It's probably not the airline's fault but they do a little to keep the bathrooms clean. It seems that some passengers don’t know or don’t care about personal hygiene, germ theory or courtesy to others. I got a picture of this announcement on my digital camera.

The air plane did seem it was from the 80’s because the screen resolution was really bad and everything squeaked a lot.

We went through the security around 9:15pm since the boarding was scheduled to start at 9:20pm. It was a usual security check, took off my shoes, took out the computer and we were cleared quickly. We walked to Air India gate and there were about 300 people waiting about and there with a couple of Air India employees behind the desk; the display showed take off time of 10pm. There was an additional security check at the gate; they opened our carry-on luggage and took a peak and gave us the magic wand treatment. I don’t know what value this adds since we just went through the same thing a few minutes ago. Our boarding passes were stamped indicating that we went through this security and we were done with 2nd round of security in about 60 seconds. The security personnel seemed to be non air India employees and were quiet friendly. There was some sort of announcement which was hard to understand, I think they stated that they will be boarding shortly.

I noticed that 95% or more of the passengers were Indians including a lot of elderly people and kids. My son found a little playground for kids near the gate and he kept busy until the boarding started. I struck up a conversation with a homeland security agent who was there to assist foreign passengers leaving the country with the kiosks that were setup around the airport to finger print and print a record of foreigners leaving the country; he was an older Indian guy and said he had worked there for several years. He started asking me about computers and international telephony. I was surprised to learn that he knew very little about computers or telephony in general especially because he helped people with the computerized kiosks. He didn’t know how to write a URL which I gave him, I had to write it down for him. While I was talking with him, a young air-india employee with ill fitted suite came by and interrupted our conversation. The Air India employee said to the DOHS employee that he will be leaving as soon as this plane leaves and “we’ve already made one general announcement, no need to make any more announcements.” It was 10:15pm at this time and the plane was still at the gate and boarding had not yet begun. The display behind the gate still read 10:00pm. The customers were starting to line up outside the gate in anticipation of an announcement.

It was around 10:30pm they announced “boarding rows 70 to 84”, no pre-boarding for first class, business class, or for people with children. Since we were in row 36, we were stood behind everyone expecting to board at the end. I made a comment that they should let the kids board first. One of the fellow passenger over heard me and suggested we should just bypass the line and go to the front and try to board. I didn’t feel comfortable doing this so I let my wife and son go, they were allowed to board ahead of most of the people. There were other passengers with kids and disabled passengers boarding this way after they saw my wife and son board.

I was amazed that there were no announcement stating the flight would be delayed even more and if there was a pre-boarding for passengers with kids and/or disabled passengers. I felt sorry for those first and business class passengers who stood in line with the rest of us to board.

We arrived at the airport at about 6:30pm; check-in was a breeze, there was no one in the line since most people did not check for the delay and arrived on time. Usually there is a line of at least 20-30 people. Air India now seems to rent the Nippon Airways counter and its employees for their daily flight out of O’hare. The lady (most likely not an Air India employee) at the check-in counter informed me that all three of our seats were not together despite my travel agent having given me seat numbers. I asked the lady if she can get us three seats together since we were traveling with a toddler, she said she would look in to it. I asked for section B which is in the front behind the first class and she found us three seats in row 36 up to Bombay (BOM). However, she could not find three seats together on the domestic flight from BOM to AMD and asked us to switch seats with someone in the plane. As an afterthought I asked her if the connecting flight to AMD would wait for us and she has been told that they would wait. The connecting flight is a smaller flight, usually a 737 that takes the international passengers to the smaller airports. Usually I’ve been delayed on the smaller flights because the connecting international flight is late.

We had about two hours before the boarding so I decided to chill out at the airport bar, the waiting area at O’hare was packed because of Air India delays and other flights leaving at the same time. I managed to order a beer and spent time talking with my brother and his family and watching my son run around the airport lounge. I had to leave my CDMA Treo 650 behind since it wouldn’t work in India. It was difficult but I let my brother take it back for me. I felt disconnected from the world.

On my way home, I checked on my Treo 650 to see if the flight is on time. I normally use ohare.com since they have most updated information and I don't have to bookmark multiple airlines. I couldnt' believe it, the website said the flight was 3 hours delayed.

I looked at airindia.com when I got home and as expected it said the flight was on time. AirIndia.com is usually not updated in real time because that would be good customer service and that would go against the airline's image. So we call the dreaded recording (they don't have any live person answering the phone; they have a not so personalized recording for their daily flight in and out of Chicago) which confirmed the delay.

With that knowledge we had some extra time to kill and go over our list to make sure we didn't forget anything. I created this blog and wrote the first entry. I took care of a few details with the house including lowering the temprature to 55 degrees.

We loaded up all the luggage in two cars and left home around 6pm to catch the 10pm flight to Ahmedabad (AMD) via Bombay (BOM) and Frankfurt, Germany.

When it comes to choosing the airline when going to India, I always stay away from Air India. Because AIR INDIA SUCKS. I have traveled with them once and had a very humiliating and horrifying experience.

I really wanted to try the new American Airlines ORD to DEL non-stop flight. However, the flight arrives in Delhi at 9:30pm and there are no connecting flights until next morning at around 8am. This means that I'd have to spend the night at the airport or get a hotel for the night; not to mention that it will also require going through customs in New Delhi and then we'd have to take all my luggage (that would be 5 large bags and 3 carry on bags) to the domestic airport by ourselves and check-in again or take it to the hotel. Don't know why AA doesn't partner with a domestic airline to offer through check-in and have better flight timings so connecting flights are within a few hours.

I wrote to AA asking about this, their reply was the flight times were decided based on how many flights can connect going out of ORD; seems like they don't care what happens with their passengers once they leave their aircraft. They promised to look into it.

This left me with a couple of other choices, I can go to London on a late flight from ORD, arrive in London in late morning and then take Air India non-stop evening flight from London to Ahmedabad (AMD). When I checked with a couple of travel agents they told me that they don't or can't sell me the LHR-AMD ticket; probably because non one asks for it and their consolidator doesn’t ask carry it because of the low volume from US. I was surprised that a travel agent could not sell me a ticket with such competition in the business from online sources. I checked on expedia and Orbitz, they did offer it but I wasn't sure if AA or UA will offer through check-in on Air India; it seemed like I would have to take my luggage in LHR, may be go through customs and check in again since the flights were about 10 hours apart. Since there were a lot of unknowns, I decided not to go with this option.

Another option was in back of my mind was Singapore Airlines; I have been following them for a while and they have a connecting flight from Singapore to AMD once or twice a week. They are ranked as #1 airline along with Cathay Pacific. I checked the prices and timings; it was about 2000 dollars (about $600 more than avg. ticket price) and it required travelling through LAX, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore to get to AMD; total trip time was about 33 hours one way.

The last option was <insert your favorite expletive here> Air India. The only reason being they offered a transfer at Bombay (I'm not going to call it Mumbai, deal with it). You can transfer to a local connecting flight without having to go through customs and immigration checks at BOM and the trip time was about 21 hours. I don't care about me so much but it would be really easy on my wife and son to come back on their own.

So left with not very good options, I reluctantly decided go to India on Air India with very very very very low expectations. As long as I don't die, what's the worse that can happen? When I made this decision my gut feeling told me that this was a stupid decision and something will go wrong.