After spending a wonderful week in Mauritius with two close friends of mine, it was time for me to head back to India to spend time with family. If you had the opportunity to read my previous report, which detailed the inbound journey from Chennai on the nonstop service aboard Air Mauritius, you would have remembered that the checkin desk made me book a return ticket out of Mauritius as ‘mandated’ by the Mauritian government. I quickly took a look back then and booked Air India with a stop in Mumbai and then onward to Chennai. For those that have paid attention to the Air India - Vistara Merger, Air India has created an easy to distinguish method to know which of their flights are still using Vistara aircraft (Interiors, branding, etc.). All Air India flights that are 4 digits and begin with a 2xxxx are Vistara experiences. I’ve outlined my flight route below with a stop in Mumbai for a few hours.
After I’d landed in Mauritius, I was quite content with the itinerary so I made no further changes. With the trip quickly looming, I said my goodbyes and took a taxi to the airport. Unfortunately, Mauritius does not have any ride sharing, at least ones that I’m aware of. After a 45 minute ride from River Noir, I entered the only terminal at the airport and proceeded right where Air Mauritius counters were. Air India flights are contracted and handled by Air Mauritius agents on the ground. Ground experiences are many times uneventful and in many cases they can be drama filled. Today’s was the latter. There was a family of 6 with more than 20 suitcases who were having a shouting match with the agent about something unknown. Unfortunately they were in the priority line and there wasn’t any sort of effort from any agent who had gotten free for me to sidestep them. It turns out they were not premium passengers and they were complaining about baggage limits.
Check in was extremely smooth otherwise. I was also able to keep the seat that I’d booked while I was at the airport on the way here. Seat was 6F today. Lounge invitation and boarding pass in hand, I was asked to use the priority customs line by the check in agents but when I got there I was ushered through to the regular line despite the priority line having had an officer. After the quick check I went ahead into a priority security line and made a quick stop at the lounge for a coffee and a small bite. I think MRU has great facilities but being a holiday destination it may make sense for better guidance and proper supervision of the facilities that they’ve built for passengers flying in all classes.
Stunning views this morning on our way to the airport
Fresh after a downpour
Still celebrating the new year after a few days
Air India counters
Christmas is still being celebrated too
Couple small bites before I left for my flight
Air Mauritius crew can't help but chat about the beauty that was coming in
Air Mauritius A332
Boarding! Love the glass jetways, they remove the claustrophobic feeling you get in the older types you find often
Our beautiful jet after a nice rinse
Air India semblances
Would be great if this business gets implemented India wide :)
Welcome drink in hand. Looked better than it tasted
As everyone in the J cabin started settling down and having watched everyone else board into the rear cabins, you couldn’t help but notice that everyone just wanted to sleep. With a 10:30 AM departure, it’s likely everyone had woken up at 5 or 6 AM to shower, get ready, and depart. Keep in mind the airport is a significant distance from many parts of the island. But I digress, there was a feeling of ‘I just want this plane to depart so I can settle in and get some shut eye.’ It was almost as if my thoughts had been listened upon to, because in that moment the gentleman in 2D began to snore to levels of epic proportions. We’re talking about levels so loud, no one is sleeping and this was right after boarding had finished. Most passengers expected him to wake up during Taxi. My friends, this man did not wake up to anything, well almost anything.
He slept very well, and right through taxi, takeoff, and meal service. He briefly woke up and ordered himself some red wine. Big mistake my friend, big mistake. About 20 minutes into flight, some passengers actually complained and asked the FAs to wake him up. Understandably, they were confused as to what to do. The only thing that gave the rest of us some relief, was his snoring waking himself up and him adjusting himself to a new sleeping position. And about two hours into flight, out of nowhere, he woke up and arose. The man had somehow knocked over the red wine he had barely touched and spilled it all over his pants. In his state of confusion, he started talking to his seat mate as if they had known each other. It became apparent they had not from the other person’s confusion. He walked up to the FAs and managed to find some napkins to help clean up. Jokes aside, it was an unfortunate situation and I was willing to bet he just wanted to get home at that point.
The very sleep A330-900 ready to take off
A neck twisting view on the starboard side of the aircraft as we bank away from Mauritius
Everyone just wanted to get some sleep
Service began with some Chardonnay and some warm nuts
A nice welcome surprise that there was free Wi-Fi onboard today. The message stated that they were doing this for a limiting time. Could this be the beginning of an era of free WiFi for Air India?
Decided to catch the highlights of the Man United game on the Live TV channel onboard. Still so amazed how this is considered normal now
And I called it
Showtime featuring Vistara-era tablecloths
The shrimp main with Indian Chappatis, a salad, and some raita.
The FAs insisted I try the bread pudding on top of the fruit platter
I forgot to mention, I switched to the cab sav after my first drink
There is only one reason this man woke up, a glass full of wine all over his pants 😂
The mood lighting really could have been leveraged a bit better to be honest, but still quite welcome
A strange turn around the middle of the ocean with almost no cloud cover. My assumption was there was a lot of turbulence in the said area we were avoiding
A view of the Matheran Hills
Sheer density
One of the backbones of the Emirates fleet, the Boeing 777
Our flight route
The Partnership
The view from the transfer route that they've opened up after landing as an international passenger in BOM
A nice cozy lounge space for paying J passengers. Credit card holders have a separate entrance and area in the lounge which is actively monitored so no sort of leaks happen
Didn't have time to jump in this but seemed like a nice cozy space for Centurion cardholders
Lounge food in India gives most cities around the world a run for their money
Hanging out in the Mumbai airport isn’t the worst place to be but apart from a few places to eat and shop, I had enough with the walking around. I had 3 hours and 20 minutes till the next departure to Chennai. Something I’ve noticed in Mumbai and Delhi that is consistently done is the demarcation of boarding at about the 1 hour point regardless of whether or not the flight actually boards. In almost no instance does the flight board. My guess is it’s to gather the passengers from all over the airport to head to the gate. To the frequent flyers this makes them less willing to actually head over to the gate. After spending 2.5 hours at the gate, I only found out that we had an hour’s worth of delays because the lounge agent called the gate and they told me that I could hang out for another half hour. The same thing happened after the 30 minute point and at this point I just decided to go for a walk. Rant over.
Our A320 NEO from Vistara, operated by Air India, featured a very cozy 2x2 Business cabin layout with 2 rows for a total of 8 seats. Surprisingly, this flight was in J and PE was also very full. I chose 2F for our departure to the south of India.
Air India's slapped these stickers on all the Vistara aircraft that I'd come across
Air India's new A320 business seen on a few of their NEOs very closely resemble this J product
Vistara signage still very much visible
Our gate ended up being just adjacent to the one where my previous aircraft had parked so I got a nice perspective of our plane as it was readying for its next journey
The Vistara uniformed FAs taking food and drink orders prior to takeoff
Had a wonderful conversation with the First Officer who sat next to me. He had just done the 16 hour flight from SFO-BOM and was jumping on this flight to head home to see family. Talk about being a trooper
The exact spot where the classic Air India Boeing 747-400 was parked for quite a while. You may remember it for having gone viral on YouTube for doing its final flight before it departed for the graveyard
Dinner was the Indian option, absolutely fantastic spinach curry and murgh curry on the right served with Indian bread
Coming into the our gate position in what was once the old International Terminal and now is used as the Air India Terminal (Air India, Vistara, Air India Express)