There’s something quaint about traveling air India as I just did on my way to Mumbai. The aircraft are old of course and you can see some parts of the seats are broken. Apart from that though it was a rather pleasant flight.
The food was great as usual. Fluffy and creamy omelettes served with bits of zucchini and peppers. Papaya that was route and fresh unlike what jet airways serves. And the same old naayi bun and coffee.
It was a pleasure watching the stewardess through their weight around, though. One could say that their snarkiness was a welcome change from the sugary sweetness of jet and indigo stewardesses. It was rather charming to watch.
Now these stewardesses are from another era, one where air fares were expensive and only people from a certain strata of society flew. Now these people don’t seem too have taken too kindly to the egalitarian shift in passenger profile and have consequently put on a condescending attitude to passengers
As they came around with breakfast they snapped ‘sir don’t you want breakfast’ brusquely waking people up in the process. I happened to ask one of them what was for breakfast and she snapped, ‘we always have omelette for breakfast’ with her tone indicating that I was a philistine who hardly flew. I wanted to tell her that I rarely fly air India but then the creamy omelette beckoned.
The best part of today’s journey, though, was that for perhaps the first time in six months during which I’ve probably taken two dozen flights there was an empty middle seat next to me. A the joys of the old times of 70% passenger load factors!!