Air India is currently undergoing a massive transformation, as the airline has been privatized, and billions of dollars are being invested into improving the operation. The goals are impressive, from taking delivery of hundreds of new jets, to overhauling aircraft cabins.
As you’d expect, an airline won’t magically change overnight, though the hope is that some number of years down the road, the airline will be totally recognizable. Unfortunately the current experience that many Air India passengers are getting leaves a lot to be desired, so here’s the latest example of that…
Air India’s “worst first class” goes viral on Instagram
An Instagram user with nearly 200K followers took to the platform to share his recent experience flying Air India first class, on the 15-hour flight from Chicago (ORD) to Delhi (DEL). He claims this ticket cost either $6,300 or 250,000 miles (and it’s not clear how he paid).
The video is narrated, and contains lots of “evidence” of the issues. Here’s the caption of the video, which gives you a sense of the problems:
I recently endured a 15-hour non-stop flight from Chicago to Delhi, and it was far from pleasant. I had heard negative things about Air India in the past, but I was hoping the recent changes under new management would improve the experience — unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. There was no Wi-Fi, and the in-flight entertainment was down for the entire flight. First class was in poor condition — unclean, with leftover food and trash still in the cabin, and everything looked worn out or broken. It was a pretty frustrating experience overall. Be aware if you’re flying with them.
You can see the video for yourself below, and it does indeed look pretty awful, if you ask me. The cabin is largely being held together by tape, the entertainment system is broken, many of the food options aren’t available because they catered just one per cabin, and the cabin just looks downright filthy.
As a follow up, the traveler claims that Air India refunded his ticket cost, after seeing the post on social media. Of course I suspect the average traveler wouldn’t get that type of treatment, and rather this is due to the amount of attention that this story received, plus the number of followers he has.
This is what concerns me about Air India’s changes
I’ve given Air India a lot of praise for the changes that it’s making, and have also acknowledged that we need to be patient, because an airline can’t totally transform overnight.
However, regardless of how old cabins are, one thing you can immediately do is to try to improve the condition of cabins, and maintain them as well as possible. This includes fixing things that are broken, and also maintaining cabin cleanliness. Even with old cabins, there’s nothing stopping Air India from trying to keep its cabins looking as presentable as possible.
Based on the reports I’ve heard, even some of Air India’s brand new Airbus A350s are already showing a lot of wear and tear, with the airline not doing much to maintain them.
I do hope something good comes of the bad publicity Air India is getting for this, and that the airline commits to doing a better job maintaining its cabins. Because while you can’t install new cabins on all planes overnight, you can start to maintain them better.
Bottom line
Air India is getting some negative attention for the sad state of its aircraft cabins, especially those used on routes to the United States. Air India’s 777 first class might just be the worst first class product in the world. While I can’t fault Air India for having older interiors (since the airline has a plan to update them), the lack of basic maintenance is inexcusable, in my opinion.
What do you make of this Air India “nightmare” first class flight?
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