After some time spent with friends and family in the South of India, it was time for me to head back. For those that followed my inbound, I flew in on Virgin Atlantic (Delta Ticket Stock) from New York to Mumbai. My return as part of the Round Trip was operated by Air France from Mumbai to New York. Given that I was heading to Chennai, where my family is from, I had to get positioning flights to and from Mumbai. I chose Air India on both sectors within India. My positioning flight from New York was from LGA to YYZ on Delta.

With the merger between Vistara and Air India and the assimilation of Air Asia India, the Air India group becomes the only Full Service carrier left in India. Operational efficiencies have begun. They have become my first choice for a few reasons including, their baggage allowance across Economy, Premium Economy, and Business and their membership in Star Alliance. I’d like to say I feel for passengers who have no choice but to fly carriers who don’t provide great code sharing flights within India.

In many circumstances they will have to fly positioning flights and will be subject to baggage allowances that are abnormally low despite the fees that they collect. In many cases this is limited to 15 KG for Economy. You’re better off buying full fare business on the positioning flights as your baggage charges on lower class fares will outweigh the cost of J fares. Funny enough, I had some last minute packing which led to that exact situation. Today’s Air India flight (AI672) to Mumbai was one of the Airline’s brand new A320 NEO jets with a 3 class configuration. I flew Premium Economy and was seated in 6F. Fare was INR 12550 (USD 140) paid $220 in baggage fees. Quite steep for a one way domestic flight, though it was booked the day before. Given a daytime departure, Check-in, security and boarding were all quite uneventful. I did find it odd that there was a woman sitting in my seat when I boarded and when I let her know, I thought she would just scoot to the middle seat but she just removed herself from the row and went back to her seat in Economy. Quite an odd way to try your luck I guess. I had a long way to go so I just wanted to rest and enjoy Mumbai before the rest of my journey. Enjoy the report!