Decent Airline for the Money
Written: Oct 09 '07 (Updated Oct 09 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good value.
Cons: Aged planes; delay / cancellation risk.
The Bottom Line: Good option if cost is a concern.
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| biholzman's Full Review: Indian Airlines |
We just returned from Germany flying Indian Airlines from Los Angeles to Frankfurt. We selected Indian Airlines based on price and schedule. We flew economy.
After booking the tickets, I read reviews on IA and got quite concerned. I'd like to relate my experience based on the metrics others have already spelled out:
1. Punctuality - Our flight ran about 1 hour late from LAX - FRA and was on time for the return.
2. Food - Food is decent for airline food. We ate the Indian food, both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. If you want vegetarian, you must specify before flying otherwise they will not give it to you. If you have kids, you must request a kids meal before flying as well. They are quite firm on this. Otherwise, they were generous with snacks and drinks.
3. Bathrooms - I read comments that the bathrooms are messy and run out of toilet paper. Our experience was that the bathrooms were typical of what you would expect on a long haul flight, no cleaner, no dirtier.
4. Baggage - no problems although in LAX they seem relatively picky on weight and dimensions. Also, in LAX, they insisted on 1 carry-on only although in FRA they didn't seem to care.
5. Service - nothing unusual. No ruder or friendlier than any other airline I have flown. The movies played are a mixture of Bollywood and Hollywood.
6. Counter Service - check in was quick in both directions. In Frankfurt, we walked right by Lufthansa which had awful lines to AI which had almost no line. In LA, there must have been 5-7 counters open for only our flight.
7. Airplane - Here I would say the plane we were on was definately aged on the interior - seats were a bit grotty, headphone jacks didn't all work, etc. On the other hand, leg room was above average.
I could see that the flights could be significantly delayed as they use one plane to go LA - Frankfurt - Delhi and back. If something happened at any point, the whole schedule would probably get blown out - my guess is there is no substitute plane to fill in if there is a problem.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
biholzman
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Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 0 members
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