- Air India, India's debt-ridden, flailing national carrier is one of the two airlines that flies nonstop to India from the US.
- In March, I took the nonstop 15-hour long flight between New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport and New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Last month, I went on my annual pilgrimage to India. My parents still live there, so a trip once a year or so is pretty much non-negotiable.
But this time, instead of settling for a connecting flight with a layover in Europe as per usual, I decided to fly nonstop to New Delhi - not only to save time but because the direct flight during this time of the year didn't come with the exorbitant price tag that it usually comes with around the time of the Christmas holidays.
My only two options were United, which is a 15-hour flight from Newark Liberty International Airport, and Air India, which takes around the same time, but departs from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. I decided to go with an economy ticket on the latter.
Make no mistake - Air India has a terrible reputation. India's national carrier is a flailing, debt-ridden airline that frequently ends up at the very bottom of global rankings. Its facilities are hardly state-of-the-art, and it often gets dismal customer service reviews.
I was nervous, as I too had a bad experience flying Air India once before. But I had last flown the airline on this route all the way back in 2010, as a tourist to the US heading back to India. So I decided to give it another shot.
Here's what I thought of my Air India flight, departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport at 2:25 p.m. for New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport, operated on a Boeing 777-300 ER.