About Air India

I travelled Air India/Indian Airlines during my visit to US this time. People are always apprehensive about travelling these 'national carriers'. We get to hear horror stories about how badly they they are managed, how badly the staff behaved and so on. I now have first-hand information about these airlines, so I am ready to bust some myths about them.

* Air India/Indian Airlines flights are all old.
- True. But what about ? The fact is, pretty much all American airline companies are under bankruptcy protection or close to getting there. So they are forced to run their crafts until, say, one of the wings falls off. So we can pardon AI/IA there.

* AI flights are not safe
- Baseless.

* AI check-in staff are rude and unhelpful.
- Not true. I saw perfectly helpful and smiling staff at AI/IA check-in desks. Of course there may be some rude staff in some places, but can you say that won't happen with other airlines? The AI check-in desk staff in Chicago turned out to be dumb, though. They insisted that I move some stuff from my cabin luggage to my laptop bag, because cabin luggage was too heavy. I had to convince them that since both go into the same overhead storage in the flight, it won't make a difference :-)

* AI flight crew are old, slow, stiff faced and unhelpful.
- Partially true. If flight crew have to deal with misbehaving passengers every day, we cannot expect them to remain cheerful throughout the journey. Many desis, once they board AI flight, feel obliged to ask for additional servings of alchohol and within a couple of hours of flight, can't control their minds well. Some feel it is the right opportunity to flirt with air hostesses (What is your name? You are very beautiful. Which city are you from? and so on). Pretty much nobody heeds to the announcements made in the flight until the crew force them to (Landing instructions, etc). Very few of the passengers say "Thank you" when being served. So we can compare the state of crew to BMTC conductors at the end of their day. Considering all this, they do a fantastic job.

* AI flights stink
- True only in toilets, but that too not at the beginning of the journey! Many don't like using toilet paper, so they carry cups to the toilets and... you get the idea. So by the end of the journey there will be water logged on the floor of the toilet, so obviously it stinks. Most passengers don't perform the basic courtesy cleaning of the wash basin, so that stinks too.

* Jet Airways is better than IA.
- True. Jet is better than pretty much all of the domestic flights in the US as well :-)

* Food in AI is good.
- True.

So all in all I think AI/IA do a pretty good job. Some people complain about everything that is 'ours', so they surely complain!