yeah. trip to chennai last friday. company sponsored. Chance to fly the good times. The air hostesses are a hype. in my humble opinion. I, perhaps, expected Yana to be on the flight. They were polite though. All of the ground staff were too. Except for the woman at the check-in counter. I should've taken the baggage on board. Sheesh!! Had to wait in the queue to check the baggage in, inspite of a web check-in and a printed boarding pass. Neat touch that - self-printed boarding pass. Do all airlines do that now with web check-in? If I had only carry-on baggage, I could've walked straight from the airport entrance to the security check and boarded the flight. Ah! That would've been so pleasant.


In-flight magazine is hundreds of page 3. Mallya is on most of them. So are a number of pretty women. Thumbed through the mag in less than 1 minute. Not my type of reading material. In-flight entertainment. the video is a mix of tv channels - ndtv, hungama, etc. The audio channels had a nice selection of rock and jazz. The headphones (which you can take away with you) were of standard issue airplane sound-quality. Should have brought my earplugs along.

Flight to chennai was a mere 30 minute affair for the jet. Dinner was three *small* aloo-masala sandwiches. You are given exactly 7 minutes to gobble it all up before the hostess is back for the tray. :) Can't blame them though. Baggage was out quick.

Return flight from chennai. Extremely polite and helpful ground staff. They are all over you. In a nice way. Infact my check-in baggage was carried across to the check-in counter by one of the ground staff. Wow!!

Plane was an ATR72. The turbo-prop toyplane (Ok, I agree it is not that small). The one with those huge exhaust fans. Well, they are not exactly exhaust fans.. Before boarding, I was wondering how the plane would even fly. After boarding, I was blown away by the interior.. Cushy, really cushy seats. fake leather, I presume.. enormous legroom. I could sit with my legs crossed. Do they fly this thing to other destinations? Both sides are two-seaters. that's all the plane can contain. Only one class. No economy/first/business. Would make it my choice of flight. :)

My window seat's window opened right out to the edge of the fan's blade. Scary to see the blade rev up and spin at those mind-numbing rpms. What the heck would I do if the fan decided to unhinge? :-O

Food was great - comparatively speaking. I don't expect much from airline food, so my opinion might be coloured. Steaming hot chicken-egg fried rice, chicken in some sauce (the menu card claimed basil-flavoured sauce), salad of corn-cucumber-peppers and rasmalai for dessert. Decent food and a very pleasant hostess.

Yeah, definitely the good times.