India - Domestic Airlines

[rlarosa]

Hi All,

Booking some flights for BOM-GOI in Dec and having difficulty deciding on which airline to use so interested in other's experiences.

Prices vary quite a bit but not too worried about cost - spicejet $175 return for 2 people, Indigo $443 and Jet/JetKonnect $298.

Have flown all three before, last year. Flew Jet BOM-MAA and GOI to BOM and the planes were quite old and shabby. They do have more frequent flights though. Flew Spicejet MAA to GOI, new Dash-8 that was surprisingly comfortable. Flew Indigo BOM-TRV return - newish planes and good service.

Interested to hear other's thoughts and experiences!

Rob

 

[Shy180]

Flew Indigo and Jet last year for domestic Indian flights.

The challenge for me is more the at the airport experience (which is near universally terrible for everyone) rather than the planes / airlines etc.

Agree Jet have cough old planes but the Indigo flight was quite pleasant with newish planes and (for India) efficient service and staff.

Happy travels.

 

[docjames]

Hi All,

Booking some flights for BOM-GOI in Dec and having difficulty deciding on which airline to use so interested in other's experiences.

Prices vary quite a bit but not too worried about cost - spicejet $175 return for 2 people, Indigo $443 and Jet/JetKonnect $298.

Have flown all three before, last year. Flew Jet BOM-MAA and GOI to BOM and the planes were quite old and shabby. They do have more frequent flights though. Flew Spicejet MAA to GOI, new Dash-8 that was surprisingly comfortable. Flew Indigo BOM-TRV return - newish planes and good service.

Interested to hear other's thoughts and experiences!

Rob

Having flown all three you may be in a better position to choose than most!

Which one are you leaning to? Why?
What are the drawbacks of the other two that turn you off them?

 

[rlarosa]

Shy 180 you are right! The at airport experience is pretty woeful. It does make me chuckle though that they make everyone walk through a metal detector even though they will use the hand scanner thing on everyone.

I'm probably leaning towards Jet for their schedule, and Indigo for the service. Spicejet are almost too cheap, if that makes sense!

 

[Traveller1955]

I used Jet extensively late last year and I found them quite good even snagged an upgrade to BC for a small cost ex Delhi to Amritsar

 

[Alh01]

I thought Jet had rather new planes compared with Indian Airlines, so the other two must be pretty good. My experiences of Jet over about ten years of flying there were all quite good - service OK, flights more or less on time, FAs reasonably personable. IA experience was universally bad on all counts. And I never could quite cope with paying double fare just because I was a foreigner.

The pre-flight experiences of having your luggage opened up for searching, left on the tarmac in the rain for identification, and the hand detectors all over your body still never really made me feel safe. Hopefully that part has improved.

 

[browski]

FWIW I think the Jet Airways product is the best. They seem the most professional. Always hoped they would join One World instead of the Kingfisher jokes.

 

[NDiddy]

Prices vary quite a bit but not too worried about cost - spicejet $175 return for 2 people, Indigo $443 and Jet/JetKonnect $298.

Interested to hear other's thoughts and experiences!

Rob

Hey Rob,

Have flown all three and two on the BOM-GOI route itself. TBH for an hour flight you can't go wrong with any of them but I normally chose Jet if the prices are comparable. Just out of curiosity what dates are you looking at? Some random dates in yatra for Dec show prices around the $140 return for 2 with Indigo and the others not too much more.

 

[Ben170292]

Hi,

I flew Spicejet on Dash 8s HYD-VGA-HYD, which was really good, we had over 25kg of luggage each and they were happy to accept it.
I also flew Jet Airways VGA-HYD-BOM-HYD-VGA and they were also really good (accept delays because of fog, but obviously not there fault but kept everyone up to date).

I would fly either again, but if prices were similar i would choose Jet over Spicejet because of it being a full service.

Ben

 

[rlarosa]

Thanks for the feedback all! In the end decided to go with Jet, mainly for schedule. I'll be sure to write up a TR in Dec!