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TKMCE · Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 957

It was time for my 6th flight on SG and surprise surprise , all my voyages on SG have been only on the Q 400. My spouse is nowadays most impressed about my increasing knowledge of spices and especially its Hindi names. Found that this time the ride was to be on "Imli", the "newest" Q400 which meant that in my half dozen trips I have flown on no less than 5 different Q 400s with "Kesar" the only one I have had the good fortune to do a repeat voyage.

I love airports and that meant that I had reached my embarking airport well in time for my flight, so early that I had more than 3 hours for the flight to depart. The airport showed no signs of the flood ravage just five days ago which forced it to shut down for nearly 30 hours. The airport management deserves a big round of applause as everything today was routine.

The airport is actually one of the first airports constructed under the public private partnership and is one of the best airports in my opinion to fly out of India as there is no cut throat User Development Fee as well anymore now as all the costs have been recovered. My flight was departing at a very off peak time for the airport with just a Saudia A330-300 to RUH departing half an hour before my flight and an Air India Express B737 departing 90 minutes after mine. My flight was one of just two international departures of SG from the airport, the other one being a B737 departure to DXB.

Check in was announced by 1015 and other than the SV flight mentioned earlier, there were no other flights departing at that time from the international terminal. Check in was a breeze and immigration was straightforward as I had all the necessary documentation. Security at the airport was by CISF and this time it was a very pleasant set of personnel on duty. Went upstairs tot the spacious departure lounge with more than 2 hours to go. A delayed EK flight was just taking off and the SV aircraft was already on the stand. I love this particular airport as it has no less than 3 book shops in the departure lounge, a reconfirmation of the high literacy levels of my home state.

Both SV and my flight was almost full with people returning after spending the Eid break at home. I could spot at least 10 other pax who had taken the same out bound flight as mine at the start of the vacation.

Flight finally took of 10 minutes after the scheduled departure as the incoming aircraft operating a domestic flight landed late. There is both a cabin and cockpit crew change over for this flight and we had a distinguished looking European captain this time in charge. Unlike his Indian predecessor who was in charge for the outbound flight and who apparently was of the firm belief that he had better things to do than communicate with the passengers and left all the talking to his cabin crew, this time the helmsman clearly was of the old school and welcomed us on board before taxing out, apologising for the delay and came on air once again shortly afterwards that due to bird chasing at the airport (of the winged type) we were awaiting take off clearance at the holding point. Soon enough the birds were successfully persuaded to vacate the take off path and we were on our way .

Our man in charge was also clearly a team player and soon it was the turn of his Indian first officer to say a few words about the flight . The meal service started soon after. The flight I was taking is the only SG flight to the country in question and to combat the full service competition from its established competitors, unless SPECIIFCALLY requested for, SGs agents in the country in question will sell the flight with a 3 dollar mark up per sector which is the cost for a sandwich/juice combo. It is not a bad deal but nowhere approaching the offerings by its full service competitors.
That said since your meals are pre ordered the crew does address you by name, however you do not get served first and you await your turn as the trolley approaches but they do keep aside your meal and generally you have a choice of juices to chose from. If you want to be served first in a Q- 400, then avoid row 9, 10 and row 19,20 as generally one crew starts serving from Row 1 and the other from Row 11. Also before the meal service the crew will make an announcement inviting you to look at the in-flight magazine for details of the food offerings, but again do not waste your time on Q 400 flights doing this as no hot meals are available on Q400s.

Finally we were not able to make up any time and landed 10 minutes beyond schedule. No other flights were arriving at the same time so immigration was quick and efficient as always. The delay meant that I missed my usual bus to the town centre and had to wait for half an hour for the next one. Boarded the bright red Volvo city bus and reached home in 15 minutes. passing by the sea plane landing strip where two De Havilland Twin Otters of one of the local operators were landing one after the other.

The only other incident of note was just five minutes before landing when my fellow passenger not only received a call on his mobile which he had clearly not switched off (let alone keeping in flight/ silent mode) but then instead of disconnecting the call went on talking in a loud voice how he is speaking from aboard the plane not yet on the ground and how his wonderful phone is picking up signals so far up. The guy had introduced himself to me earlier saying he is a staff member of one of the worlds leading luxury hotel chain's upmarket resort in my destination country , leading one to wonder whether these chains are facing such acute shortage of manpower to hire irresponsible guys like this.(he said has working more than 3 years in the resort in question). I was not alone in this thought as a co-passenger sitting in the seat in front was heard remarking in a loud voice that despite his home state having one of the highest literacy rates in the world the mobile call incident was a painful reminder that there are still enough illiterate morons left in the state to cause embarrassment to every one else and wondering how such morons are ever allowed aboard a flight.

With this alarming thought ( I had read about LX 498 only a few days back) , I invite you to guess the origin and destination of the flight covered in the above trip report Smile

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

COK-MLE, of course. Thanks for a lovely report, TKMCE!
I had though that I had submitted the last Trip report for the night (IST), and was sleepily going back to bed, but your report made me sit up, and I read it with relish. Your vivid descriptions more than made up for the lack of pictures. You gave a nice insight into the travel agent operations - that snack is a thoughtful idea! You are lucky to have flown so widely on the SG Q4s - with such eenie-meenie-mynie-mo changes in the SG schedules taking place, I have been quite hesitant to take SG flights, even if it meant a possible Q4 ride. I have done the NDC-BOM sector back on 16 Mar, 2013. Needless to say, I had booked the SpiceJet Max offer, of a seat of choice (06A), and a sandwich-drink combo. The sandwich had turned out to be a lovely Chettinadu chicken sandwich in marble bread, with an apple drink to wash it down. I was actually shocked to know that one meal had also been loaded on board, but that was after I had finished everything, and an insistent passenger bought it. I wonder if it had been warmed - are there ovens on board the Q4? I doubt it. If you have indeed taken a few pictures, please post them here - this is a really exotic route which many of us have not been on, and would love to know more about it. Thanks for sharing a lovely trip report with us!
Cheers, Sumantra.

Nimish · Posted: Sun Aug 11, 2013 7:50 pm Post subject:

Lovely TR - thanks for posting. Sounds like SG is having a good time with the Q400s - able to deal with low loads with low expenses as well. I'm yet to try a Q400, something on my to-do list.
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ameya · Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 10:37 am Post subject:

Thanks for the TR. Can we also have some pictures of MLE ?

jbalonso777 · Posted: Mon Aug 12, 2013 12:15 pm Post subject:

An amazing mysterious Trip Report, thanks a lot for sharing!
I loved the vivid descriptions you gave along with this.

For a minute, I thought SG has started giving Hindi names to B737 aircraft too, and then, I felt SG were actually sending Q400s to the middle east!
You certainly got me there!

Looking forward to more.

Regards
Jish
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stealthpilot · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 2325 Location: BLR, DXB

Had me confused for a while but it fell into place Wink

No pictures? Anyway not greatly missed the descriptions were great!
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