In Hyderabad

Recently I travelled from Kolkatta to Hyderabad on Kingfisher A320 Airbus. Thought I should share this experience considering the hoopla that surrounds this airline and its service.

Believe me, service in any airline in India is much better what we get in US. But airlines in India like Jet Airways and Kingfisher claim to be full service. So, I thought I should share my experience so that the chairman can take a note of things that dont work the way he thinks they are working.

As my cab to the airport came to a halt, a man wearing a kingfisher shirt [ Bright red, you will not miss them.. ] came up to me and asked if I was flying kingfisher and took my bags and walked me all the way to the security check point. This service is available for all kingfisher passengers and the check-in lines were very well staffed making it an easy experience. Boarding was good.. it was the only airline boarding the flight by seat no’s in India so far and it made my life easy since I was pretty much in the tail area of the plane [ My company restricts biz class travel to international only.. ]

Good :
1. End to End service and they refer to passengers as guests
2. Leg Space in Economy Class
3. Eye Candy .. [ Mr. Mallya really knows what men want ]
4. Yana Gupta .. [ Introduces the security features of the plane.. Heck who will not watch the video ?? ]

Attention to detail needed in these areas..

1. Great inflight magazine, lots of pictures, but the friggin thing doesnt have a CrossWord or a Sudoku.. Its a 2 hr flight what am I supposed to do ?

2. Kingfisher Personal Entertainment system was limited. [ I liked the Jet Airways System which has a touch screen feature and covers movies, music, tv shows, book reviews, book summaries etc., and lets you pick anything you want. ]

3. In-flight advertisements on Kids Channel : A kid sitting next to me was pissed off an kept complaining to his dad about the ads.. Barney stopped every 5 mins to show him ads about fidelity..

4. Need to pay more attention to the seat trays.. They were not cleaned well, otherwise the plane was very clean.

Food : Jet Air is the best with linen napkins etc. May be this segment was an exception, but they served an appam and veg/chicken stew in this flight and I am completely lost. Who serves appam and stew to a crowd of Bongs and Hyderabadi’s [ Remember.. this was a flight from Kolkatta to Hyd ]. Also stew is not the best inflight food when combined with turbulence..

Overall it was a good experience.

From gate to plane : The best experience I ever had.
In Plane Experience : Ok, but can be improved with a little more attention to detail.
Food : Long way to go.. Jet wins easily [ may be an exception.. but I will update when I have a better experience ]
Fare : In line with Jet Airways