I took this flight for a very specific reason. In order for me to know how
effective Air India’s transformation would be, I wanted to see where they were starting.
Hi there, my name is Kevin. This channel came from a love of traveling,
a love of the full process and the journey itself. I feature airline trip reports and
high end hotel reviews from all over the world. My reviews aren’t sponsored by airlines or hotels so
you can be sure to get my unbiased opinion. Am I an expert? You can decide. Am I fair? Yea, I am.
Let’s get into it, welcome to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle International Airport
where I’m now heading to terminal 2C. But first,
a bit of beautiful departure board admiration is in order.
If you’d like to know the exact fare that I paid for this flight, which connects to
Mumbai- or you want to see the next five videos I have in queue, check out the description below.
After a bit of France’s most expensive plastic, I headed to check in, where I
found myself without a print out of my eVisa, but in some very friendly ground crew hands. If you’re
in the same position, the pharmacy just down the hall will print it off for you for free.
Our flight tonight was full in both cabins, but checkin was painless and
looked equally so for economy as well. If you’re a fan of honest travel content,
please be sure to click that subscribe button. As you know this video is not sponsored by Air
India in any way shape or form and so your views and comments really do help the channel grow,
which means more honest content for you. For long time viewers, you likely have noticed some
small changes over the past month or so- and as always I’m open to any feedback you’d like
to leave in the comments- since after all this content is, for you. A big thank you in advance.
Heading up to the departure concourse and admiring the duty free ode to Foie Gras,
I was making my way to the Paul Maxence lounge, which was included with my business class ticket.
The lounge was very comfortable, with some odd shag carpeting and had a limited selection of
food and drink on offer. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but this had to be an Etihad lounge prior,
right? I don’t even know if they used to have one here but the colors just scream Etihad.
If you weren’t aware, Air India was recently acquired by Tata Group,
an Indian Mega Conglomerate- and is at a major turning point, likely for the better,
in its history. Tata was actually taking Air India back though, you could say. Air
India was founded by, you guessed it, JRD Tata himself as Tata Airlines in 1932,
which initially provided air mail services between Karachi, Mumbai and Chennai.
After WWII, it became a public limited company and rebranded as Air India. Following independence,
the government assumed a majority stake in the airline and they became a bit of
a darling in the aviation world at the time. In 1960 they received their first Boeing 707,
the first Asian Airline to receive one and in 1962 became the world's first ever all jet airline.
The arrival of 747s and expansion dominated the airline for the next few decades until the
government tried to privatize the airline in 2000. That didn’t work. In 2004 the government created
Air India Express and merged the two airlines with Indian Airlines and Alliance Air in 2007-
and things really started to snowball, with annual losses amounting to almost $1 billion by 2009.
Let’s fast forward to near present day and Air India is serving 89 cities in
29 countries from their largest and second largest hubs in Delhi and Mumbai respectively.
Let’s admire these design choices as I provide a bit of a disclaimer. When
I took these flights in late November and until when I’m writing this script,
developments with Air India in the context of the Tata takeover are happening very rapidly,
so you’ll excuse me if some tidbits I relay don’t pan out to be true years from now.
Boarding began bang on time with priority given to Business Class and Star Alliance Gold passengers.
So, Tata Group is ginormous in their reach. Along with Singapore Airlines,
they created Vistara Airlines and after buying Air India also decided to swoop up Air Asia India,
because you know- why not. To put it into an American perspective. Imagine if Jetblue,
American Airlines, Spirit, Poland Spring Water, Gate Gourmet, Conrad Hotels, Buick,
Starbucks and Costco were all owned by the same company. That’s essentially what Tata is in India.
So, they now have grand plans to Merge Air Asia India and Air India Express into one
low cost carrier- and they’ve also announced they will fully merge Air India and Vistara as
well and are beginning the government approval processes now. With an added capital infusion,
Singapore Airlines will control a 25% stake of the new combined airline.
Let’s take a look at tonight’s stats. We pushed back a minute late for our
eight hour flight to Delhi which ended up arriving around 20 minutes behind schedule.
Tonight we’d be riding on a 9 year old 787-8, one of 27 currently in Air India’s Fleet.
My seat tonight was 3A which was also the last row of the small business class cabin with a
total of 18 seats in a 2-2-2 configuration. These seats are very similar to the ones I
recently had on Ethiopian Airlines and previously on Turkish as well.
They are comfortable enough and have loads of legroom, but certainly are not winning any awards.
That brings me to Air India’s current reputation, which, until a few months ago, was not great.
From a lot of chatter I’ve been reading online recently though,
Tata has already started to implement quite a few long overdue changes, which is nice to see they’re
pulling up the boot straps right away instead of waiting and just focusing on the merger.
Air India is known for kinda beating up the 787s and reportedly even scrapped
a relatively new one some years back to use it for spare parts.
As we look around the seat, let me give you my overall impression on board.
The crew do very well with what they’re given. There was one stand out member of the crew who
was very warm and welcoming- the rest were all polite and efficient but not exactly enthusiastic.
The seat had an old school remote for the
entertainment system and a USB port and universal plug.
Hot towels and pre-departure drinks were passed out. There
were no menus on my flight though. If nothing else, I do love the branding.
I will give Air India one thing, there is something charming and old school about
the way the do some things- such as the magazine trolly which they also handed out pajamas from.
Nice to see a specific nook for shoes and my beloved over head air vents.
So, the aircraft was actually in better condition than I was expecting, but that really wasn’t
saying much. Tata has already announced that all wide body aircraft in the fleet- including
their 777s as well will be completely refurbished and they’ll also be installing premium economy.
I’ll talk more about the fleet plans for the combined airline in my next Air India video.
We pushed back and made our way to the departure runway.
The spool up, take off, airport stats and a last minute view of Paris is coming up next.
Let’s take a look at all of the stuff on board. All of these things were
waiting at the seat during boarding, most of them individually packaged.
The slippers were fine, but as usual to small. There was a thin blanket what I first thought
was kind of insufficient before I realized there was a proper duvet coming as well.
For the duvet and the pillows, I had absolutely no reason to say
they’re not clean, but I also can’t say they felt particularly clean.
Got some eco friendly paper packaging,
which was holding together an eye mask and socks, both individually wrapped in plastic.
The headphones were also in a paper wrapper and were a bit of a mess and very muffled.
As for the entertainment on board- I guess it’s in line with what you’d expect.
There was also an amenity kit which was super old school but not really in a good way which
we’ll look at in a moment. First though we’ve got a charming drink trolly service. Individual orders
and pouring behind the scenes is nice and I know the premium way these days- but I really do wish
there were more proper trolly services out there. I was given some almonds and peanuts along with my
sparkling water and I was asked if I wanted one of the following. Veg ravioli, veg rice pilaf,
non-veg chicken or non-veg roast lamb. I asked for the chicken and was instantly told they were out
which made me laugh a bit. Ok, I’ll go for lamb. The side salad was just really bizarre. It had
baby corn, avocado, pineapple, olives, radishes, tomato and chicken. Olives,
pineapple and avocado is one combo I really never need to have again. As for the main
dish it was insanely gamey. I’m not a fussy eater at all but I could only do one bite. The veg were
plain as and the potato souffle was edible but had this strange artificial smoke aftertaste.
The crackers, yogurt and apple tart for dessert were by far the
best things on the tray- besides the branded silverware of course.
The bathrooms were decently clean throughout- though that water cup has been lodged in there
for some time. And I suppose the touchless features don’t work anymore-
also, don’t flush water bottles in the toilet- got it.
My seat mate was not the jolliest fellow and had been sleeping while hacking up a lung or two for
the better part of the flight, so I had to settle for this shot of the seat in full flat mode.
The amenity kits were packed full of stuff- and half of the bottles leaked.
Can’t say the contents were of any good quality but I do like
pouch itself though- in a very New Jersey 1990s Formal Living Room Vibe kinda way.
The interior was cute though. Got
some always handy sandle soap- and a quirky MDF compact mirror.
As we were crossing over Pakistan, the sun began to rise and they breakfast
service was being prepared as the engines started to glow in the morning light.
The choices were, veg, or nonveg. This time I went with veg and I do think it was a wise choice,
but the sandwiches were just not good. A little bit frozen and a lotta bit underseasoned.
The fruit was edible but had the distinctive Sysco commercially packaged fruit flavor to it.
Again, the highlight was by far the dessert which was a pair of macarons. I gotta say, this
is the first flight I’ve had in a very long time where I got off the plane in search of a meal.
As we neared the Indian border, we started our descent over the arid northern Indian plains.
I live in Asia, Air pollution is a problem just
about everywhere but the air pollution here was just a whole different level.
We had a very short taxi to the closest gate and as I deplaned
I noticed some mildly inappropriate throwback posters on the rear wall.
Was not expecting a Vietjet ad to be the first thing to greet me in India,
but VJ has certainly built up a sizable presence in the country seemingly overnight.
Alright, so what was this. Well, it was very much in line with what I was expecting. Nothing
offensively bad but nothing that I’d choose to repeat either- except perhaps for the one stand
out crew I mentioned earlier. I am very glad that I got a chance to fly the “old” Air India though
because I think there are a lot of good things in store for it over the next year. I’ll see you on
my next flight to Mumbai and please stick around the next few weeks for 11 more videos from India-
with even more coming later this year. Thanks for liking, subscribing and clicking that bell.