Jet Airways 331

Mumbai(BOM) – Delhi(DEL)
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Depart: 10:21 AM
Arrive: 12:33 PM
Duration: 2hr12min
Distance flown: 708 miles
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800
Seat: 26C (Economy)
Meal Service: Breakfast

Last weekend, I was on a flight to Delhi, with Jet Airways, who else? For a flight scheduled to take off at 09:55 AM, I arrived at 08:00 hours to check in. My brother was booked in on the same flight but on the JetKonnect codeshare. Due to being listed for a upgrade, I was not going to be able to check into the flight online. So, in a nutshell, the both of us were at the mercy of the Jet Airways crew to get a good seat. As a Platinum, I had the option to pre-reserve my seat, and I was on 10A.

The first thing I noticed was that the Economy queues were empty, while the Elite queues were full, I guess thanks to all the elite membership cards.

Once we arrived at the counter, there was no mention of the upgrade list. Nada! Zilch! The flight loads were going to be easy and this was a good opportunity for Jet Airways to burn 2 vouchers at no extra cost to them. Hey, there are already meals loaded for J cabins, and on domestic flights there is no beverage service, so this was going to be easy. However, they chose to ignore it completely.

Eventually the question to me was if I wanted to check into 10A and put my brother on another seat. So I asked for two seats together, and we were told the first open row was in the back at Row 26. We took 26A and 26C respectively.

The flight was going to be on an A gate in Mumbai’s Terminal 1, which meant we were going to fly from an Aerobridge and hence we had lounge access. After passing through the security check, where a passenger was trying to carry along 2 litres or so of water and Sprite, and creating a small scene, we managed to get through to the lounge.

The lounge experience was pretty consistent, just like our earlier flights from here. You can check out the lounge experience here and here. The only new thing I noticed, was the Diners Club section in the lounge.

The flight was supposed to be at Gate A2, however, there was no mention of the flight even till 9:45 AM or so, and another aircraft going to Bangalore was parked at the gate. Eventually, Jet Airways updated that the incoming flight was delayed and we could now expect departure at 10:10 AM. When the flight was announced for boarding, it was an unstructured boarding with Jet Airways like always.

The plane was a Boeing 737-800, in a JetKonnect livery. The configuration with 12 J seats was not even mentioned on their own fleet information, however, there were about 6 J seats full and the rest empty.

We pushed back another 10 minutes later, and as soon as we completed our climb, the crew started preparing for the Breakfast meal service. Half the plane was asleep, however, ahead of my row was a row full of people who had reclined their seat all the way to the back and were snoring. We had to ask the crew to get them un-reclined and wake up for breakfast if they wanted.

Breakfast had 3 options: North Indian, South Indian and Eggs. North Indian breakfast had Aloo Parantha with Alu ki sabzi, South Indian had Idli and Upma, while the Eggs breakfast had Omelette with Sausages. All the breakfasts came with bread rolls, butter & cut fruits.

I went with the North Indian breakfast while my brother went with the eggs.

After the meal service, everyone went back to sleep. Like I mentioned earlier, the flight was half empty, and this picture is just to show you that

We had a smooth landing into Delhi and were on our gate after 2.10 hours of flying, a little longer than usual. Once we got through the trek that is Delhi Terminal 3, we were on the baggage belt to collect our bags, which took 5 minutes for the first bags to get on the belt. Amazingly, Priority Baggage worked and our bag was one of the first to get out. Once we had our bag, we were on our way to the Arrivals Lounge.

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