Review of Air India flight Mumbai → New Delhi in Economy

A CABIN OF SURPRISES ;)

Hey guys and welcome to another Flight Report!! 

This is the penultimate FR on my recent trip around Asia and will cover my second domestic flight within India from Mumbai to Delhi on India's flag carrier. I specifically picked this flight because it'll give me an opportunity to fly on one of their widebodies instead of the usual A320 that operates this route (and other domestic routes). This flight usually alternates between a 777-300ER and a 777-200LR. These 777s operate routes between India and North America, which are Air India's longest flights with a flight time of around 15 hours. Now instead of suffering 15 hours on one of these 777s (you'll see why later), I get to experience it on a (much more bearable) 2 hour hop instead. 

As for price, I paid around IN₹5000 (€55/$60) for a single which isn't too bad. It is a bit more than LCCs but that's obviously to be expected. Checked baggage and seat selection is included in the base fare. 

From 2023, I aim to offset all of my CO2 emission from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard. The CO2 output for this trip is:
 
BOM-DEL: 94kg
Total for 2023 (so far): 3515kg 

video report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's got pretty much the same thing content wise. 

MUMBAI CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI MAHARAJ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (BOM)

Taking a taxi to the airport - the traffic here is much, much better than Kolkata (the roads too). 

The drop off area outside of the terminal. 

As usual with Indian airports, a ticket and passport/ID check is carried out at the entrance. 

The check-in area. 

Departures for the afternoon. 

The check-in/bag drop desks for domestic Air India flights. As you can see, there weren't any queues.

Security took around 10 minutes and we are greeted by some greenery and a small pond airside. 

But yeah, this place is huge with a ton of shops.

There's also a huge food court as well. 

Walking to the gate. 

The gate area - once again very nice and modern with plenty of plants and greenery, something very lacking in airports. 

View of the apron - our plane haven't arrived yet. 

Notice that tiny little plane taxiing in the distance? That's an Air Tanzania A220 heading to Dar-es-Salaam (DAR) with a flight time of 5 hours 30 minutes. I mean, I know long distance narrowbody flights are getting more and more common, but 6 hours in an A220? That's a bit too long haha. Although, it appears that this flight is now being operated by their brand new Boeing 737 MAX 9. 

The seating here. 

Another photo of the apron with an Air India Boeing 747 parked in the distance. The type was deregistered in 2022 so she seems to be parked there semi-permanently. 

An Air India Boeing 787-8 in the Guru Nanak 550 Years Livery (VT-ANQ) heading to London (LHR). 

A final photo of the apron with 2 Vistara A320neos. 

the flight

Flight time today will be around 2 hours and here's our route. 

Boarding started on time and as usual, I lined up somewhat early so I can photograph the cabin/seats when it's still relatively empty. However, I forgot something very important that I should've learnt in my last flight with Vistara - people in India generally don't do queues. What basically happened was the second boarding was announced, everyone sitting around the gates jumped up and pushed ahead, creating a massive mess and made the whole process really confusing (it was supposed to be done in groups but I don't think that really happened). 

But luckily, I was able to get onboard somewhat early still and here's a photo of the cabin. I don't usually read reviews about the airline/flights I'm about to take, preferring to be surprised onboard and… yeah, this cabin really is full of surprises. The first thing I noticed was that the cabin is in a 3-3-3 layout compared to the 3-4-3 layout used by most airlines. This means that there's 1 less seat per row and results in much wider seats. 

And then, here's the legroom. This is insanely good and is better than premium economy (or extra legroom seats) on a lot of airlines, which is great on long haul flights. 

There's also a foot rest, which is very rare in economy. 

Most frequent fliers would've already guessed it's quite an old cabin from the legroom and the 3-3-3 layout but if you're in any doubt, here's the IFE and tray table. 

The tray table is actually broken. It's sort-of falling off its hinges (especially when the person in front reclines). I was quite scared using it during the meal service in case it breaks off completely (it didn't thankfully). 

And… as if a broken tray table isn't bad enough. Yes, the IFE is broken as well. My screen is flickering non-stop and the one next to me just refused to turn on, even after the (very friendly) crew reset it. 

Finally, to add to the massive pile of stuff broken, here's the armrest with the remote and a broken headphone jack. It's actually hilarious how much is broken at this point. 

Just as a reminder, this plane regularly flies 15 hours to North America. In fact, she just came in from Newark right before this flight. 

Honestly, this cabin is great if you just want to sleep for the entire flight but that's very hard to do for a full 15 hours (unless you're a cat). If you are flying this long-haul, I'd suggest bringing a book (or two) or a tablet for entertainment and don't count on the IFE - although there'll be an IFE review later… at least an attempt with a broken screen. 

As a side note, it appears that Air India will refurbish their 777-300 fleet (and retire their -200s) in 2024. Hopefully that'll result in a much better cabin (at least one that isn't broken…)

First views out of the window. 

Some info about our plane:

Type: Boeing 777-300ER
Registration: VT-ALT
First flight: 17 May 2010
Age: 13 years
Config: F4/C35/Y303

Named नगालैंड / Nagaland she was delivered to Air India in May 2010 and has remained with the airline since (although she was stored for 6 months between 2018 and 2019). 

Wait… 2010? I was shocked to find out that she was only delivered back in 2010. For some reason, I honestly thought this cabin was at least 15-20 years old, which I believed until around an hour ago when I looked up the registration. I'm definitely not old enough to remember what flying was like in the mid/late 2000s, which is why I believed it was a cabin from 2005 or something. Honestly, it shows how horribly maintained this cabin is but I'm also really curious, can someone please let me know if this cabin is what you'd expect for a new aircraft back in 2010? Thanks! 

Pushback around 30 minutes late.

Oh look! A Yemenia A320 (7O-AFF) that will be heading to Aden (ADE). That's not an airline you see very often, although apparently (according to Wikipedia), they've got 10 A350-900s on order, which is rather interesting. 

After ~10 minutes of waiting, we're finally off to Delhi! 

Climbing through the clouds - sadly the windows aren't the cleanest. 

I've mentioned it multiple times, but my favorite seat on a plane will always be right behind the flaps. I love watching the different elements move during flight but also the wing flex looks really cool from here (especially on the 777 and 787). 

Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with dinner:

Yeah, it's definitely not the prettiest. There was an option of either chicken or vegetarian. I went with the vegetarian. Apologies for not being too familiar with Indian cuisine but I'll try to describe it. The main is potato curry, chickpea with curry and bread along with chocolate cake for dessert and a green pea salad for starter. I'm sure there's a name for everything I described but I'm not sure - sorry! It's a lot, especially for a domestic flight. However, the quality wasn't great. The salad was horrible and bland, I didn't really like the chickpea curry but everything else was fine. It's definitely not as good as the meal on Vistara but a hot meal for a domestic flight is always nice - I just hope the meal served on long-haul is better than this. Also the broken tray table didn't help. It should be lower than this and extends out (look at the one on the left for comparison) but I didn't dare mess with it in case it breaks off completely.

With dinner done, let's have a look at the IFE (at least on a broken screen). Thankfully, the flickering improved massively after takeoff (although you can still see it in some photos).

I joked in my video report that this is the slowest IFE review you'll ever see. There is no touchscreen (at least it doesn't work) but the remote works thankfully. It took ages for anything to load and there isn't a screen where all the movies are listed, instead it's sorted in categories, forcing you to go back and forth to see all the options (making the loading time even worse). And, after all that waiting, here are the options: 

These two photos (above and below) are all the English movies available (yes, really). The top being 'latest English' and bottom being 'classic English'.

And these are the options in the comedy section of TV. There's also categories for children, light entertainment, sports/adventure, music videos and relaxation/health. At this point, I just got bored of waiting for everything to load and just went straight to the map. 

Here's the moving map. 

This is really bad, not just in hardware but also its contents, especially for an airline the size of Air India. I did say earlier about how you shouldn't count on the IFE but I'll mention it again. If you are flying this on a 15 hour TPAC flight to North America, please do bring some entertainment (especially if you have kids) or else it'll be a very painful flight. I really hope the IFE on their new 787 is better than this content wise.

Starting our descent into Delhi.

It got dark pretty quick after this, which isn't great for photos. But welcome to Delhi, we arrived 15 minutes late. 

Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL)

Finally! An airport name in India I can pronounce! ;)

Walking to baggage reclaim. 

Terminal 3 here at IGI airport opened in 2010 so it's fairly modern. It also has some pretty interesting hand sculptures, seen on the right. 

Here's the baggage reclaim area. It took 15 minutes for my bag to arrive. 

And finally, here's the arrivals area landside. 

That concludes this rather interesting FR on Air India's 777. I've added a tourism bonus of my time in Delhi, so feel free to check that out. My next FR will be the final one in the series (and of 2023) and will see me fly back to Europe on a very special flight, see you there! 

Bonus : Click here display hide

Red Fort - a fort in Old Delhi that once served as the residence of Mughal emperors.

Lotus Temple - it's a Baháʼí house of worship and is open for all to visit.

India gate - a war memorial dedicated to the Indians that died during World War One and the Third Afghan War.

The view from my hotel room. It really puts into perspective how huge the city is, it literally stretches to the horizon and beyond.

I was walking past a random train station so I decided to do a quick 15 minute trainspotting session (I find the railways just as fascinating as aviation). It was fun seeing all the trains and how people will just walk/sit on the tracks without care - something completely alien to me from the UK.