#13 out of 22 Low-cost airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
24 reviews
This will be my shortest-ever report in terms of pictures thus far… not like you can do very much other than sleep on a flight taking off before the crack of dawn, when the windows are shuttered!
August 2023 was a momentous, historic month for the Indian nation, in terms of both the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing (perhaps our country’s crowning glory on the world stage) and — from a more aviation-oriented point of view — the Air India mega-rebrand, with years of government apathy being glamorously replaced by the Tatas flaunting their crown jewel’s new colours. For me, however, it was a horrible, horrible month, because I spent most of it coughing severely due to some respiratory inflammation that I’d caught in July — and this has continued on and off ever since, and well into 2024, with some weeks passing by as if nothing had happened, and others where I could barely gasp for breath amid all the sneezing and wheezing.
In fact, no sooner did I return from my New Year trip to Vietnam than this violent, virulent (but not contagious) coughing attack returned with a vengeance, making the first working week of 2024 a most miserable one — one that, thankfully, subsided in the weekend that followed, as I am slowly on the road to recovery. But August was severe on my health and constitution, and against my parents’ better advice I refused to return to Bengaluru, where they now live, for medical treatment — until September started and a weekend trip to Batam (organised by the co-living company Cove, which I’ve mentioned in my Ethiopian trip report from Kuala Lumpur) made me realise that it simply wouldn’t do to carry on without help from trusted, familiar Indian doctors.
Needless to say, no sooner did September start than I had no choice but to book an on-the-spot week-long trip to Bengaluru. And unless you want to pay an arm and a leg (read: tens of thousands of rupees) at the last minute, this necessarily meant one thing: confronting my bête noire — the IndiGo (6E) early-morning (depart SIN 5:40am) and redeye (arrive SIN 4:15am) flight with near-zero catering — which I otherwise go out of my way to avoid when flying between India and Singapore. At an affordable S$400 roundtrip, this was pretty much the only option I had, and much as I’m all too eager to slam IndiGo’s anti-catering, anti-entertainment, anti-comfort international product otherwise — though domestically it’s tolerable (perhaps even pleasant) enough — this time there was simply not going to be a leather seat, IFE screen or hot (or any) meal. No, 6E absolutely will NOT do that — this isn’t AirAsia with its Wi-Fi, or VietJetAir with its Indianised hot meals!
I had no choice but to swallow humble pie and steel myself for the country’s least innovative airline when it comes to service, but otherwise a Goliath in terms of market share, 300+ fleet size, fleet age, profitability and pretty much other metric there is. However, I was very pleasantly surprised and even shocked by the concern its cabin crew showed me, when they realised that I was far from in the pink of health. I think it’s only proper to commend the cabin crew on this early-morning Bengaluru flight for showing all the care they could, and reassure me that, despite my misgivings, I’d be taken care of till touchdown and had no need to worry at all. For this reason, what I’d thought would be a dreadful flight at a wretched hour turned out to be a sweetly memorable one, and I went as far as getting myself clicked with the cabin crew (something I also did for Ethiopian) and uploading it to X/Twitter as a token of gratitude for their service — for which I was promptly thank-youed by its social media team, something that Indian airlines love to highlight in their magazines and socials.
This, then, is the cover image of this report — posted again here in full resolution — and it should hopefully now be clear why!
Few airlines have been as adamantly resistant to improving the onboard product as IndiGo, all the more so for a demographic as price-sensitive as the Indian middle-class, where the lowest price is far more important than a proper onboard product. As long as factory-fresh A320neos, A321neos and ATR 72s keep getting shipped by the dozen every month, to hell with hot meals, leather seats, entertainment and frequent-flyer programmes (much the opposite of the renewed Air India Express with its streaming IFE and other frills) — with the Hello 6E magazine being the only saving grace, at a time when Singapore Airlines and Emirates themselves have slaughtered their own publications. Much as 6E has exponentially skyrocketed to becoming the world’s biggest A320neo and A321neo operator — all while launching destinations as far afield as Nairobi, Tbilisi, Almaty and Jakarta — it has vehemently refused to provide even a sandwich on any flight unless it’s been pre-ordered online.
A good example of this is redeye flights to Southeast Asia, which have benefited 6E’s bottom line — with the A320/1neos being efficiently used on Indian domestic routes in daylight hours — but have been brutal to customers, with the lion’s share of flights to Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia (served only from Chennai) and Vietnam (served only from Kolkata) landing between 2am and 6am. The only exceptions are its BOM–SIN 6E1813 and DEL–SIN 6E1013 (and, since October, MAA–SIN 6E1003) flights which leave India in the afternoon and reach Singapore late in the evening. The Indian automotive forum Team-BHP — which often features threads on the country’s airlines — recently held a poll on which Indian airline is considered the best by forum members. Vistara was the winner by a landslide, with almost everyone lambasting IndiGo for its staff’s apathy, paper-thin seating cushions and complete refusal to provide catering of any kind, let alone hot meals — and I’m afraid I must concur with them in most aspects, even though (I must emphasise here) its all-female cabin crew have been nothing short of friendly and cheerful in my experience. Only the ever-unreliable SpiceJet manages to do worse, and it is indeed the airline no one in their right mind should ever choose — with its 737s (and MAXes) always in need of repair — unlike 6E’s unbeatable network and fleet plus its expanding codeshare networks.
Those in big metros have other options… but how about those who need multiple turboprop flights home?
And this is for someone who is privileged enough to live in a major metro with nonstop flights to Singapore: Chennai until 2023 and Bengaluru thereafter. What of those who have to take multiple connecting flights to their destination city? For the Christmas 2023 weekend, where I was happily flying the SQ A380 to Mumbai, a colleague around my age had to attend her brother’s engagement in their home city of Hubballi or Hubli (HBX) — not too far from the beach hotspot of Goa — in the north of the southern Karnataka state, of which Bengaluru is the capital. I don’t envy her journey at all, entirely on IndiGo, with the flights to/from HBX on the ATR 72: first Singapore to Mumbai; then a redeye Mumbai to Bengaluru; and another early-morning Bengaluru to Hubballi. (The return was a much more straightforward HBX–BLR–SIN on New Year’s Eve, and in fact my colleague was on the leg to Singapore when 2024 began!)
That said, though I took the same SIN–BOM–BLR initial routing as her, my night was equally as exhausting as hers: I spent the entire night half-dozing, half-roaming at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport’s Terminal 2, trying to catch forty winks first amidst the check-in crowds and then in the Adani Domestic Lounge after jostling amidst countless others to enter. However I must be grateful that I was able to do so on the SQ A380 and Vistara A320neo (being upgraded to Premium Economy on the latter) — and get lounge access courtesy of Priority Pass — while in her case IndiGo was pretty much the only option from start to finish, in cramped seats with little to no meal service aside from water. That said, to be able to get home is in itself an achievement for Indians staying overseas, and we (including her) will grin and bear it no matter how much the effort and expense, and no matter how much our butt aches from being in a wafer-thin chair for hours. I myself have taken countless 6E and AI flights on bare-bones A320(neo)s between Singapore and India as a broke student in the prepandemic days, so I know only too well how the other half lives!
Wednesday, 6 September, 1am. I trudged and lumbered, I tossed and turned, I had a most fitful sleep, and eventually it was time to pack. For two hours I slogged and toiled and coughed my lungs out, trying to get things into my suitcases, and wondering when — or whether — the ordeal would end.
I ordered a Gojek — a very rare thing in Singapore, given that it’s almost always priced at a steep premium to the much more boring Grab — to take me to the outrageously fabulous post-renovation Terminal 2. I knew that Air India had moved back to T2 (its prepandemic home) from T1, and I thought IndiGo had done the same. Big, big mistake! (6E did indeed move to T2 in October, but at that time it was very much based at the older-looking T1.)
At a quarter to three in the morning I finally managed to slam the lids, and at a quarter past three I stumbled into the surprisingly affordable Gojek. The Changi sign at the start of the driveway sure looks different at three-thirty-ish in the morning compared to all the other times, from morning to evening, I’ve flown out of here (especially in 2023 alone) — and rest assured I’ll ensure that this was the first and last time I left Singapore at such an ungodly hour!
Occupants at T2 included big global carriers like Lufthansa, Swiss and their Star Alliance partner Ethiopian — which I flew out of here at July for that eight-hour mini-trip to Kuala Lumpur — as well as the lesser-known Firefly (part of Malaysia Airlines) and Royal Brunei Airlines. The terminal was completely deserted at this hour, and immediately I realised my blunder.
Now I’d have to drag bag and baggage to Terminal 1 — that too without Skytrains, given the middle-of-the-night departure — with my body all but ready to collapse from exertion, exhaustion, enervation and (perhaps oxymoronically) excitement. I say ‘excitement’ because, despite my body basically being a wreck, the energy to lug a pair of suitcases for a couple of miles had to be coming from somewhere!
The linkbridge to the Jewel Changi — that megamall that outsiders can only gape in awe at (but that I’m more or less inured and indifferent to) — was what I’d have to take to go to Terminal 1, given that Jewel is directly connected to T1’s lower-level baggage-collection belts and arrivals hall. There were some marvellous late-night views through the glass windows, which at least made the slog worthwhile.
Most of the retail outlets were expectedly deserted, save for The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and a few others, and there were still a handful of people roaming around in the nearby arrivals area, many of them coming on Scoot flights from China.
Eventually — at around four — I made it to the IndiGo counter, dumped my suitcases and got my boarding pass. Good thing that 6E has a very generous baggage allowance of 30 kg on its Singapore flights, on par with full-service carriers, which our famously luggage-toting Indian middle-class households have no doubt made optimal usage of.
The surrounding airlines were as diverse as it gets: some as global as British Airways — whose livery is, I daresay, decidedly similar to IndiGo’s (white tail, blue belly) — and others as hyper-local as Chinese regional carriers. Two such, Xiamen Air and Hebei Airlines, had a sign placed for them on their behalf by Changi Airport, given that Mainland Chinese airlines don’t tend to have much branding themselves — even though the former actually has a pretty logo, and is part of SkyTeam, which its parent China Southern was previously in.
The one and only Oneworld Connect airline, Fiji Airways, also had its check-in signs placed in the vicinity — and in fact most of the alliance’s members use T1 at Changi, from Qantas to Qatar to BA to Finnair to Malaysia to JAL. For good reason, since Qantas’ First Class Lounge here is one of the most renowned in the world — and a must-visit for any Oneworld Emerald, alongside the ones at Sydney and Hong Kong, not to mention Cathay Pacific’s outstanding The Pier and The Wing at HKG. (However, SriLankan — which I’ve flown both into and out of Changi in 2023 — uses T3, while Cathay Pacific uses the physically disconnected T4. The Jetstar group — both the Singaporean Jetstar Asia and the Australian parent — also shifted to T4 in March 2023, thereby losing out on connectivity with Qantas and its friends.)
Nearby, All Nippon Airways’ morning Tokyo Narita flight — with an NQ code, signifying regional affiliate Air Japan, instead of ANA’s standard NH code — was boarding, though both NQ802 and NH802 are valid flight numbers. In 2024, Air Japan will begin operations as a standalone low-cost subsidiary of the Star Alliance member, operating Boeing 787-9s — much like JAL’s equivalent, ZIPAIR Tokyo, which flies hand-me-down 787-8s. (Note: On 5 October 2023, ANA — along with Etihad from Terminal 3 — moved to Terminal 2 after its big North Wing expansion was thrown open, with IndiGo following suit later that month.)
Once past Immigration, I took note of the number of Chinese aircraft at the stands. Now this was nowhere close to what I saw on my Ethiopian flight in July — where a whole gamut from Air Macau to Sichuan to Juneyao to Xiamen were all represented — but there still was a China Southern A321neo (B-303X) here, and later I’d see a Xiamen 737 as well. However most of the arrivals from the People’s Republic were actually on the local low-cost carrier Scoot, being on the TR1xx flight number series.
VT-IUZ, my own A321neo today, was close to landing nearly four hours after taking off from Bengaluru’s Kempegowda Airport. In January 2021, this plane was involved in an incident at Srinagar (SXR) in mountainous, volatile Kashmir where it got stuck in snow! Meanwhile SQ2 to Hong Kong was operated by A350 9V-SHN — an acronym that Singaporeans were painfully familiar with in the peak COVID years of 2020 and 2021, given that this stood for Stay-Home Notice, a fancy term for a quarantine.
This flight number (Singapore Airlines’ lowest departing from Changi) historically continued to San Francisco, but not any more: it was scrapped when HKG banned transit passengers in 2022, and even though that was later reversed, SQ has never flown HKG–SFO as a passenger route since. (However, another US-bound fifth-freedom, SQ12 NRT–LAX, continues to do resaonably well.)
With not much to do or eat at this odd hour, I poked around at the vending machines and eventually decided on a S$2 orange juice (as in the last picture): the island has a large number of Minute-Maid-y OJ-dispensing contraptions.
A great many of the passengers took to snoozing on the sofas and armchairs, some even on the floor. What else could you expect them to do at half-past four in the morning? Other than try their hand at the vending machines or the nearby bar or Starbucks, perhaps — not much else was open at this hour.
As I wrote to my parents below in Bengali: Loke chair-e, matite ghumochhe (people are sleeping on chairs and floors). To which my mother — having dispensed a fair share of encouraging morale-boosters — replied: Howrah Sealdah naki!!! (Is this really Howrah and Sealdah?), referring to two busy railway stations in the eastern Indian metropolis and my birthplace of Kolkata.
Meanwhile, several Singapore Airlines widebodies had landed — especially from South Korea and Japan (SQ6xx series) and Australia (SQ2xx series) — as well as A350-900ULR 9V-SGC as SQ33 from San Francisco. Moreover, Korean Air had an arrival as well, as did alliance partner China Eastern Airlines, and there were some cool cargo aircraft too, such as Nippon Cargo Airlines’ 747-8 JA16KZ. Perhaps the most interesting passenger arrival at the time was US-Bangla Airlines’ BS307 from Dhaka — in fact, Bangladesh’s largest private airline has been growing nicely with a bunch of 737-800s and ATR 72s, and has even set about inducting two A330-300s, but it will be a long time before those join the fleet.
With VT-IUZ itself having landed, it was now best that I headed straight to the departure gate, where already a long line had formed. Arriving passengers from Bengaluru continued to head towards Immigration — there is no separation of arriving and departing passengers at Changi, unlike at Indian airports — while those bound for BLR were ready to stand in the long line for security.
IndiGo and China Southern Airlines are two of the largest A320-family operators in the world — with the former having the world’s largest A320neo and A321neo fleet — but, I’m afraid, they both have very bland and uninspiring liveries. Not that they need to change at all: China Southern’s blue cheatline is rather like the evergreen, immortal livery of Singapore Airlines — or for that matter Air China — while 6E is much like British Airways, as I’ve mentioned. But there are far more eye-catching paint schemes out there, like Air India’s new colours, or my favourite, Thai Airways’ violet velvetiness.
In the waiting area, my coughs were reprimanded by a stodgy Singaporean official, who threatened that I might have to be deboarded were my symptoms not to stop. That itself was enough to make me not want to step on this bare-bones aircraft at this godforsaken hour.
Fortunately, that would be the exact opposite of what I’d experience on board, which was nothing short of care, tenderness and friendliness — in other words, a world away from what I felt was ‘walking to the gallows’ on Scoot’s A321neo, which is perhaps my least favourite low-cost airline ever. IndiGo may have 1006 problems — all in the relentless pursuit of company profit and consumer pain — but sullen cabin crew (or indeed the peppy inflight magazine) has never been among them!
Flight: IndiGo 6E1006/IGO1006
Date: Wednesday, 6 September 2023
Route: Singapore Changi (WSSS/SIN) to Bengaluru Kempegowda (VOBL/BLR)
Aircraft: VT-IUZ, Airbus A321neo
Age: 2 years 10 months at the time (built: 29 October 2020, delivered: 8 December 2020)
Seat: 22F (starboard side, window)
Boarding: 5:10am SGT, GMT +8 (2:40am IST, GMT +5:30)
Departure: 6:05am SGT (3:35am IST)
Arrival: 7:30am IST (10:00am SGT)
Duration: 3 hours 55 minutes
Notes:
• First flight on IndiGo’s A321neo; it is the world’s largest operator of both the A320neo and the A321neo. I flew only one 6E A320neo in the past: VT-IZD, from Bengaluru to Chennai in June 2022, after arriving on Thai Airways’ A350 the previous night and sleeping in the luxurious 080 Transit Hotel at BLR.
• One of only three non-3-digit flight numbers in 2023, the others being 6E1005 (the return leg for this trip) and AK68 on AirAsia Malaysia from Hyderabad, which was the first flight of 2023. Until the IATA northern summer schedule in March 2023, instead of 6E1005/1006, the BLR–SIN flight was numbered 6E73 and the return — non-consecutively — was 6E58.
• Third flight on the A321neo in 2023 alone, after Vistara’s VT-TVE to Mumbai — with a ’50 Aircraft Strong’ sticker on the left — and Scoot’s 9V-NCI to Kuala Lumpur, easily my least favourite flight of 2023 (worse than even yet another Thai Airways 777-200ER in November!).
There would be two more A321neos in 2023: the return for this trip, 6E1005 on VT-IMC; and, at the end of the year, the phenomenal B-HPF on Cathay Pacific from Hong Kong to Hanoi. (Spoiler alert: perhaps the world’s crystal-clearest 4K screen, with a mini-display in a corner!) There was also an A321ceo in November, the all-white 4R-ABQ of SriLankan Airlines (its only A321ceo; it has 4 A321neos) — also on a redeye flight to Bengaluru like this one, but with much more enjoyable greige leather seats and solid (though not quite eCXeptional!) IFE.
A Northeastern crew — except for the one superstar of the show
As is often the case on IndiGo, most of the all-female cabin crew were from Northeast India, led by Yankey, who pressed her hands together in a namaste as I stepped on board. For those who aren’t aware, 6E has zero male cabin crew members, as women tend to be lighter (biology, not sexism) and therefore flying costs are saved by having only girls. Many of them come from Northeastern states like Sikkim, Manipur, Mizoram or Meghalaya, and are valued for their fair-skinned features (especially in a looks-obsessed nation like ours) while also nicely contributing to the employment of this usually forgotten region of the country.
The seatback cover read: 17 years of connecting the nation #IndiaByIndiGo. On some other aircraft in trip reports, I’ve seen I am sixteen going on seventeen, which is more in line with the airline’s sense of humour and jovial ethos. There’s no denying that no one could have brought together the world’s largest population like 6E, and its network, reliability and profitability is second to none, no matter how much you may comment on its (lack of) catering and product.
All said, if I’m not going via Thailand, Malaysia or Vietnam — ruling out the far superior AirAsia and VietJetAir with their much nicer food and product — I’ll rather take 6E (though not at this awful hour) over the sickening yellow-and-white subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, one of whose 787s was parked out the window. Equally, when flying domestically within India, it’s difficult to say no to the country’s largest airline, at least on routes not operated by Air India (Express) or — as long as it lasts — the premium purple product of Vistara.
For all of IndiGo’s many flaws — most of them fully intentional and unlikely to ever change — it does some things excellently well, among them its Hello 6E inflight magazine. As it seeks to become, in its ex-KLM CEO Pieter Elbers’ words, a ‘more global’ airline — without improving its product to global LCC standards! — its scope of destinations and codeshare partners has grown greatly, ranging from Qantas to Turkish Airlines (from which it leased two 777-300ERs carrying a gigantic 531 passengers) to its livery-lookalike British Airways.
Among those codeshare destinations was Casablanca, served courtesy of Turkish Airlines, with which it has a full-fledged codeshare agreement covering multiple European and African cities. Clearly, it takes pride in the fact that Indians have started to look beyond Jeddah, Muscat, Bangkok and Singapore for travel, and have slowly started to embrace off-the-beaten-track places like Nairobi, Tbilisi and Ho Chi Minh City — as these well-written articles show. (Full-resolution image here.)
In the absence of any other entertainment or food, I’m glad that Hello 6E more than manages to provide a modicum of reading content and ‘food for thought’, at a time when the universally accoladed Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines show absolutely no signs of bringing their magazines back — despite reviving almost all other aspects of their prepandemic product. (Full-resolution image here.)
As far as we were concerned, Prajna, the only non-Northeastern cabin crew member — she was from the coast of Karnataka, whose capital, Bengaluru, we were headed to — delivered a demo to the passengers in front on me on how to open the emergency exits, seeing as this Airbus A321neo had ten of them, more than the A320neo’s eight. ‘You will open this exit only on the instruction of the nearest cabin crew member or captain, under the command “Evacuate, evacuate, evacuate”,’ she emphasised.
I also found it lovely that Yankey’s welcome announcement started with ‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls’, as is the norm on 6E, and contained the following: ‘We will be soaring thousands of feet above the clouds… Please settle in while we make your journey safe and comfortable. As your travel companion, it is simply wonderful to bring you closer to our rich and diverse #IndiaByIndiGo.‘ Also, when delivering her Hindi welcome, there was a slight trip-up followed immediately by a Kshama kijiye (Pardon me) — something else I thought was noteworthy.
I managed to score a row of empty seats, or the ‘poor man’s business class’, which was also the case on the return leg — as also happened on all my fifth-freedom flights (though never on my Vietnam trip, where every aircraft without exception was jam-packed, and I often had to take the middle seat!). I told my parents as much, and my mother replied, ‘Bhaloi holo, ekta ghum diyo ektu gorom jol kheye’. (Good for you! Go to sleep after having some hot water onboard.) Meanwhile, the South Asian SQ arrivals had started to roll in — as well as some from Europe (Rome) and Australia — in addition to United Airlines’ UA1 from San Francisco.
Most planes outside were Scoot’s, but there were two others from Northeast Asia: a Xiamen 737 (which I’d run into a couple of times already, including one in the SkyTeam livery at Kuala Lumpur — which kind of forecast my own KLM flight on that livery) and an All Nippon Airways (operated by Air Japan) 787-9. Another 787-9 was an especially cool one: 9V-OJJ in the Pikachu livery, which I barely managed to snap as we taxied out.
Here I’ll add that historically Xiamen Air was an all-Boeing operator, like SkyTeam partners Aeroméxico and Kenya Airways — though the latter also operates Embraer 190/170s in its mainline fleet, and the former does so via Aeroméxico Connect, so Xiamen was the only truly all-Boeing member of the alliance. However, in early 2023 it took delivery of the Airbus A321neo, becoming the third SkyTeam airline to operate both the A321neo and the 737, but zero A320s or A321ceos — with China Airlines (of Taiwan) and Korean Air being the others.
Meanwhile another Asia-Pacific SkyTeam airline, Vietnam Airlines — which has a large number of A321s, including neos (but no A320s) — placed a surprise order for the Boeing 737 MAX in September during this trip of mine, much like VietJetAir’s existing order; Vietnam (and also the Philippines) has zero 737s otherwise.
As the clock struck six — it was very much dark outside — the cabin lights were dimmed and the green lights on the runway set the stage for our departure, followed by a liftoff above the dazzling runway illumination and the twinkling ships in the sea, right beside my home next to the East Coast Park. Time and again I’ve taken off from Changi — seven times in all in 2023 alone, at all times of the day from early morning (now) to late evening — and they never fail to give me that feeling of homeliness.
Not long after departure, the sun’s golden rays made their appearance above the horizon, making for a mesmerising sight at least initially — but most passengers would have no choice but to sleep, with that decision being further aided by the cabin crew’s instructions for all window shades to be closed until landing.
I voice-record every announcement on all of my flights, a long-standing tradition of mine, and with IndiGo it’s especially noteworthy since the lead flight attendant (Yankey in this case) never fails to announce the names of her fellow crewmembers and the languages they speak — in fact, earlier (prepandemic) their hometowns would also be mentioned, something I’ve never seen on another airline. Indeed, this is one thing that sets apart Indian airlines from foreign ones, where you’ll be lucky to have the name of the lead FA being spoken.
You can see that each crewmember has written her name and hometown in the cover image. Serving us today would be the following Northeastern girls: Meriponi from Nagaland; the hard-to-pronounce Kholjonching from Manipur; and Kim (probably not her complete name) from Mizoram — with Yankey being from Pedong, in the hilly Kalimpong district in the north of West Bengal state, whose capital is my birthplace of Kolkata. Of these, Meriponi was the one primarily serving our aisle.
However, the last but most important girl was the only one from elsewhere in the country. Prajna — pronounced Pragya, with gya being an alternative spelling of the Sanskrit letter ज्ञ (jña)— hailed from the coastal city of Mangaluru or Mangalore (airport code IXE) in Karnataka, whose capital, Bengaluru, is where my family now lives. She was the one whose compassion and care I appreciated the most! Needless to say, when she came around, I did not fail to save the reassuring moment of kindness in my iPhone.
Prajna was rolling the drinks cart down the aisle when I asked for a cup of water, and also informed that since I had a non-contagious respiratory condition, my coughing might disturb other passengers. (Mind you, the coughs were very loud and violent indeed, covered only by my mask-wearing.) What she said next took me aback: ‘It’s okay, sir, we’ll take care of you. Nothing to worry about. Sometimes it happens due to the seasonal change of the conditions. Please relax, take a deep breath, don’t take stress, it will all be fine!’ Words to that effect.
I was shocked and stunned (in a good way) at Prajna’s sympathy and concern. Now I have encountered many an Indian airline’s crewmember, and all of them (across IndiGo, Air India and more recently Vistara) have been friendly and courteous and all that — but this level of concern was something else altogether! She deserves a pay raise, at the very least — not least because of the back-breaking hours of duty she puts in, hopping across the country and overseas. Her actions made my day and transformed a forgettable flight into a precious memory!
This beautiful gesture aside, I wound up with a bunch of cups, one of which had a ‘Spot the lie’ trivia tidbit — it doesn’t take rocket science to figure that French fries have nothing whatsoever to do with France!
On a different note, I got to know firsthand how scaled-back 6E’s catering has become: when Meriponi came around with the snacks, I asked her whether they had any sandwich — as the airline’s Chicken Junglee Sandwich, with its tongue-in-cheek packaging and factoids, was something of a legend in prepandemic times. ’No sir, they need to be pre-booked.’ (Something I wasn’t aware of. I bet this was another cost-cutting measure — don’t load the food which hasn’t been paid for in advance, and hope that the customer won’t ask for more!)
’No problem, I’ll have a mixed fruit juice then.’ ‘Sorry sir, we don’t sell beverages — but if you buy any snack from us, drinks are free.’ (That made it sound as if we were doing them a favour, where the drinks came for free.) With little substantive on offer from the menu, I went with a tin of chocolate-chip cookies along with the mixed fruit juice, which cost ₹200 INR.
Meriponi handed over the products with a cheer and asked if I needed hot water — likely having been told about me by Prajna. ‘If I do, I’ll let you know.’
‘Yeah, you can just ask,’ Meriponi smiled and proceeded to the next passenger.
(That Telkomsel receipt you see comes from my Batam trip the previous weekend, where I went to great lengths trying to get my prepaid SIM card activated. Since I’d visited Indonesia only three months before — to Bali, where I’d bought a SIM card on arrival at DPS — my number had to be unblocked by the authorities. Long story!)
The meal service done, there were a good three hours left out of four, and what better than to see the evolution of the turbaned, moustachioed sardarji that has been a part of IndiGo’s safety cards since its launch in 2006. Much less well-known than the Air India Maharaja — he is no mascot, after all, and isn’t seen elsewhere — but he’s as old as the airline itself, and much as I try to avoid 6E on international routes, it was good to see him again. Behind, an airsickness bag that seemed to be speaking directly to me: ‘Get well soon.’!
Two hours passed by in that tranquil state of knowing that you are thirty-five thousand feet above sea level, with the sound of those Pratt & Whitney engines acting as a lullaby — the same ones that have given IndiGo a great deal of trouble over the years, leading to grounded aircraft, and that Go First cited as the main culprit behind its bankruptcy and collapse.
It was well and truly daybreak at this point, so the window shades were opened and the lights turned on as we commenced descent into Kempegowda Airport, the highest-altitude airport of a major Indian metropolis. Airports in the Himalayan regions of Kashmir and Ladakh — Srinagar (SXR) and Leh (IXL) — are obviously higher; but for a big metro, BLR is as high as it gets, located as it is on the Deccan Plateau. Before landing, there was an announcement thanking the passengers for giving 6E the opportunity to serve them with pleasure, and another for enrolling in the DigiYatra facial-recogntion scheme that has been rolled out at several Indian airports.
Three hours and fifty-five minutes after departure — exactly what the captain and lead FA’s welcomes had stated — VT-IUZ touched down at Kempegowda Airport at 7:30am IST, which may also be expanded as IndiGo Standard Time (the airline’s expansion, not my own!).
The first thing that struck me was the number of AirAsia India A320s that had been stripped of the AirAsia titles, as the airline would merge into Air India Express the following month (October) with a new livery and brand identity. However, not even one of them has been repainted, with the exception of VT-ATD, an A320neo that remains the only non-737-MAX to have the new Air India Express colours. (None of IX’s legacy 737-800s have been repainted either, as of the time of writing.) In the third and fourth pictures you see VT-KUL — one of its few sharkletted A320ceos — landing, while in the fifth it is parked alongside the non-sharkletted VT-MLE to the left. In the last picture stands VT-KTM, another of I5’s (now IX’s) sharkletted A320ceos.
Meanwhile, Akasa Air with its VT-YA* series of 737 MAX 8s occupied a good portion of the remote stands, with VT-YAK in the first three pictures and VT-YAC and YAM in the fourth — several of which originally flew for Jet Airways in the VT-JX* series until its collapse. We pulled into the gate next to VT-IPO, one of 6E’s newest A320neos — and an IPO is something that Go First (some of whose parked A320ceos are visible here) had long planned for, but never got around to until it too collapsed.
Diversion: Akasa Air’s VT-YA* registrations remind me of a Thai horror movie, Death Whisperer, that I watched in a movie theatre in Singapore — along with a number of office colleagues, including the one who attended her brother’s engagement in Hubballi — shortly before embarking on my voyage across India, Hong Kong and Vietnam at the end of 2023.
The movie revolves around a rural family in the 1970s, with six kids, all of whose names are three-letter words beginning with Y. The three sons (Yak, Yod and Yos) are all grown young men, while two of the three daughters — Yam and Yad — are in their teens, and the last one, Yee, is a little girl. Yam, one of the teenage girls, is possessed by the spirit of an old woman and increasingly acts strangely — with her family desperately trying to prevent the inevitable — until (spoiler!) her grisly end in the climax, where there is no happy ending to be found!
Now I won’t be able to look at an Akasa registration again without this movie and its characters coming to mind!
On the other side stood VT-AEF, ambitiously named Vihaan, the first of five Air India 777-200LRs to have come from Delta Air Lines (ex-N702DN) after it retired all its 777s — ten 2008–10-built 777-200LRs, eight 1999–2002-built 777-200ERs — due to COVID. These five (VT-AEE–AEI) feature the basics of AI’s previous livery, but not the jharokha decorations around the windows or the cheatline, and it will be ages before they (or, indeed, any non-A350s) will sport the new colours. Inside, they maintain most of DL’s cabin and product, including premium economy, with some changes to the IFE.
They are used mainly for flights from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru to San Francisco, which has always been one of AI’s most important destinations, aside from Mumbai to New York JFK and a domestic service between Delhi and Mumbai. So much so that it’s one of only two longhaul airlines to serve SFO but not Los Angeles — Vietnam Airlines being the other (this being its only US route, served from Ho Chi Minh City with the A350) — though AI is tipped to launch service to LAX as well as Dallas–Fort Worth and Seattle in 2024, once more A350s and 777-300ERs (ex-Singapore and Etihad) come on board.
After such lovely care and service, there was no way I wouldn’t be taking a picture with Prajna and the rest of the crew, so I took their permission to do so — and to post it online (I said ‘Twitter’, not ‘X’) — and wished them a great journey in their career at the airline. As I’d done for Ethiopian, I also asked the girls for their names and hometowns, as a token of gratitude for their kindness, and they filled up the needful details in my journal as seen in the cover image. Moreover, I also handed each one a Stabilo highlighter pen as a gift — something I always seem to have too many of!
This would be the third and last time arriving at BLR T1 on an international flight, the others being TG325 in June 2022 and SQ510 in June 2023 — and hence the final time I’d be walking on the arrivals level that lay one floor above the departure gates. The return on 12 September was the day of the airport’s international operations shifting entirely to T2, where several domestic airlines (Air India (Express), Vistara and the regional carrier Star Air) also operate.
While daytime international flights are few and far between at Indian airports compared to night-time ones, there were still a number of mostly Middle Eastern/Southeast Asian flights arriving throughout the day, with the notable exceptions being Ethiopian from Addis Ababa and Qantas from Sydney.
I had a good look at the duty-free stores occupying the departure level below, and cleared Immigration before proceeding to the baggage collection below.
I waited for twenty or so minutes before my bags came, and, as the caption shows, a dog was being transported by the baggage handlers in a cage — clearly not liking the experience a lot, as his or her petrified and constant barks were proof of!
Some more views of the duty-free shops, followed by a Relay bookstore towards the exit on that autumn morning, cold (but not chilly) as such mornings tend to be.
A Starbucks here, a Nandini (Karnataka’s state-owned dairy company) there, and I found my father — who had booked an Ola cab just to fetch me — standing outside the terminal. He led me past the Bengaluru sign and manicured gardens, past the blue Vajra airport buses, to the Ola pick-up point.
I trudged in, coughing and shivering, and before long we were out of Kempegowda and down into the city of Bengaluru, with me managing to take a few pictures before sleeping as per Dad’s advice.
Midway through the one-and-a-half-hour 45-km ride, though, I woke up and saw the planes departing and arriving at that time. Among them was VT-TVE, the one with the ’50 Aircraft Strong’ sticker that I’d flown in March, departing as UK846 to Mumbai. VT-IUZ itself, having deposited me here, would now be headed to Allahabad (IXD) — now also known as Prayagraj — in the Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh in the north.
That is the state where a new Ram Mandir temple is now being inaugurated in January 2024 in the city of Ayodhya — where a new international airport (code: AYJ) has also come up — much to the despair of Muslims, as the Babri Masjid was demolished way back in 1992 on the same grounds as this highly divisive, polarising temple’s construction. I’m not going to get political on an aviation site, so I’ll leave it at that, but I will mention that both IndiGo and Air India Express have announced flights to Ayodhya from day one, and that the intention is to turn AYJ into a high-profile pilgrim and tourist hub.
After I reached home, I randomly happened to notice that the tiny Southeast Asian island country of Timor-Leste had a visitor from an equally tiny country: Bhutan. A5-JKW, the sole A320neo of Drukair Royal Bhutan Airlines, had landed in Dili (DIL) after a multi-segment journey from Paro (PBH), the Himalayan kingdom’s sole international gateway, to Guwahati (GAU) — the largest city in Northeastern India, this being one of its few international services — to Singapore. Now this aircraft is also flying from Singapore to yet another obscure Pacific island nation, Palau, on behalf of Alii Palau Airlines, a virtual airline. My goodness, that PBH–GAU–SIN–ROR journey will be quite something…
Meanwhile was the much bigger and more significant news that Air India would be inducting two A350s by the end of 2023. Only one, VT-JRA, was delivered before 2023 ended, and is likely the one that will be used for domestic crew-familiarisation flights from 22 January to 29 February — one of which I’ve booked myself on on Valentine’s Day. However, it was in fact VT-JRH that was the first AI A350 to be painted in the new livery, as revealed in October — though it’s anyone’s guess as to when it and the other four A350s intended for Aeroflot will be delivered.
Saturday, 9 September. After three days of going to and from hospitals, it was only during the weekend that I managed to post a picture of this heartwarming flight and cabin crew to Twitter. (No, I steadfastly refuse to call it X.)
Within hours, I received a response from Shreya, from IndiGo’s social media team, who complimented me for my feedback and assured me of passing it on, at which I DMed her my PNR. It may very well be the case that a subsequent issue of Hello 6E features this picture of mine and Prajna’s — you can bet that Indian airlines (IndiGo and Vistara in particular) won’t pass up an opportunity to highlight positive customer experiences in their magazines!
An early-morning IndiGo flight — which entails heading to the airport at three in the morning — flown on the thinnest of cushions, with the barest of catering, and none of AirAsia’s Wi-Fi/streaming IFE or VietJetAir’s delectable Indianised hot meals, has no business getting a high score from me. However, the care that Prajna provided to me during a time of ill-health deserves no less than the highest appreciation, and she too deserves no less than public praise and commendation for going above and beyond, even with such a small gesture. If anything, I’ll also remember Yankey’s welcome address, and her statement that (let me reproduce it here): ‘As your travel companion, it is simply wonderful to bring you closer to our rich and diverse #IndiaByIndiGo.’ Much as 6E cabin crew are often regarded as surly nowadays — recall the incident in December 2022 on an Istanbul–Delhi flight, where a flight attendant loses her cool and shouts at a passenger after being harassed — along with the degradation in service standards, there still exist some gems who take it as their responsibility to delight and differ from the rest.
Moreover, kudos to the airline for persisting with its Hello 6E inflight magazine, a well-documented well-researched one at that, something that even AirAsia with its far nicer product has gotten rid of — not to mention the luxurious SQs and EKs and QRs of the planet. The Team-BHP poll (as mentioned in the introductory paragraphs) may heap all manner of scorn on just how badly IndiGo has lowered aviation standards in India, where you should be lucky to even get a sandwich, as ovens are non-existent. However, in the absence of meals of any kind — with only snacks being sold, and beverages ‘for free’ (as if this is a favour) — and zero plans for connectivity, where other ULCCs like AirAsia and Spirit Airlines have been rolling out Wi-Fi throughout their fleet, this at least (the magazine and the courteous, compassionate service) is enough for me to fly IndiGo again. While I will definitely not prefer it on international flights — certainly not at these wretched early-morning, late-night times — I’m more than happy to fly 6E on short domestic routes where basic snacks, a magazine and a view out the window will more than suffice.
Unlike Scoot and SpiceJet, which have barely any redeeming qualities whatsoever — despite both having streaming entertainment portals — IndiGo, for all its lackings and lacunae, is one airline I’m more than willing to forgive. Not least because no other Indian airline has been as profitable, grown as quickly (with hundreds of A320neos, A321neos and ATR 72s on order — including the world’s biggest order of 500 A320/1neos in June 2023 — and a long-rumoured widebody order to follow up) or established itself as such an indomitable juggernaut. As it expands westward to Nairobi, northward to Almaty and eastward to Jakarta, I for one have every hope that those A321XLRs — and widebodies, should they come on board — will greatly help to expand the horizons of the Indian traveller, with stiff competition from Air India Express’ much more well-rounded product with streaming IFE, hot meals and all. (I’m hoping for IndiGo to order A330-900neos, as Lion Air, Cebu Pacific and Thai AirAsia X already have them. The A330 hasn’t quite caught on in India, certainly not after Kingfisher and Jet Airways — which operated a handful — went under!)
UP NEXT: This, as I said, is my shortest trip report by far with a measly 45 pictures, but I hope the inherent emotions will more than compensate. My next instalment will focus on BLR T2’ splendour and grandeur — all the more so as it was on the day of the inauguration of international operations — with the flight itself being nowhere as memorable or cherished as this one, on top of which it landed at the godforsaken hour of a quarter past four amidst a black sky. However, come February, more exciting trip reports await: SriLankan’s A330-300 (which I finally managed to catch in November, after missing out in April) and all-white A321, where the fabulous service — including a ***special cake!*** — rightfully made this my most-flown airline of 2023, with four flights, beating SQ’s three. Then will come yet another disappointing Thai Airways 777-200ER — flying TG is playing Russian roulette; an A350 on six days but a 777-200ER on the seventh — but things get better with a day of mall-hopping in Bangkok and a fabulous Gulf Air 787-9. And this is to say nothing of the SQ A380, the CX A350 and A321neo and everything else on the Hong Kong/Vietnam trip — these will all occupy the first half of 2024, as it’s only early days.
Thank you for keeping up, and may you encounter a kindly soul like Prajna on as many of your flights as possible!
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 3 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne Singapore (SIN) → Bangalore (BLR).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est Singapore Airlines avec 8.7/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 3 heures et 50 minutes.
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