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ameya · Last edited by ameya on Wed Jun 12, 2013 8:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

To have a trip planned, when you are just about to finish the last of your TRs of your previous trip is a dream come true. While I might not fly as much as many others on the group, I always look forward to my flight, like all of us on the group. As a friend of mine recently put it, Flying is an addiction, may it be as a pilot, crew or a pax, couldn’t agree more.

An opportunity came up to visit a prospective client, see his operations and his current issues, before we pitch in with either our solution with some consulting or make a solution for him. I jumped on to it. DEL & BLR have always been my favorite cities but I shied away from both and chose PNQ when it came to job.

Anybody on this forum, I believe, will never recommend me for a non aviation job anywhere, thinking, I am wasting my time in office, even before the trip in writing this TR. None the less, I have some free time this morning and a flight later in the day so I decided to start writing this...

Trip Planning

The chap whom I had to meet confirmed that I can see him on Thursday early morning, around 0500 hours and be with their operations chap for 2-3 hours. I had planned another meeting in Mumbai on Thursday, so I decided to plan such that my trip would be as below

Depart PNQ on Wed eve & Stay in BLR.

Depart BLR for BOM on Thu and return to PNQ by Shivneri, the MSRTC Volvo service on Thu night.

Office admin books from MakeMyTrip corporate booking ID and when it comes to my department, all domestic and international bookings are done after taking advice from me.

The flights out of PNQ for BLR in the afternoon / evening hours are as below. 6E is pretty much the capacity leader with 3 flights each way, followed by SG / 9W who have 2 each.

pic1 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

I had an option of taking 6E at 1710 or G8 at 1825. Both were selling at same rates when they were about to book and I chose 6E over G8.

Web check-in

As soon as I got the tickets, I started a web check-in which was smooth and easy. Selected a window seat for myself on the port side, since I would be flying south wards and would avoid the setting sun.

Aircraft Rotation

This is one of the oldest rotations of IndiGo. One with which they launched IXA & also PNQ. I suppose within the first 5 rotations.

abhigopal · Member Joined: 01 May 2008 Posts: 172

Enjoy your flight. I was on the same flight last friday - completely packed flight to BLR.

Boarding was very disorganized, and used the aerobridge on the first floor. Pushback was a minute late - arrival was on time. Bags were out quite quickly as well. Overall - plain vanilla flight from 6E

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 4:00 pm Post subject:

I had to leave early since another colleague had work near the airport, so I reached early at the airport. I have never ever minded that.
Pune airport is seeing some construction on the land side and hence the departure gate has changed.

Its now closer to where the arrivals is and one has to walk down leftwards if you are travelling anything except G8/LH, strange combination I would say.

I did walk down the entire length and approached the 6E counters, where there was orderly check-in happening for flights to HYD / NAG& DEL / BLR. I chose to go to the hand baggage counter and take my boarding pass and quickly went to security.

It was slow but steady and I was in security hold within no time to proceed to the first floor. Met an old Prof. (Not sumantra Sir), an old friend and an ex colleague

None of the aircraft where there on ramp at that time, around 1525hrs, which means everything was running on time.

Soon, VT-SPW operating as SG214 from COK and going onwards to DEL with same flight number landed before time and docked at aerobridge at Gate.1

VT-IEY followed from AMD as 6E 136 and would operate onwards to NAG and DEL. This was parked at Gate.2 / Aerobridge.

VT-IEV operating as 6E 313 landed before time from HYD and what looked like a full flight, as passengers disembarked. This was parked at Bay.3

I could not see the pax for the first two aircraft since they are not visible from the hold area from first floor.

Soon, VT-JBJ with Konnect decals landed operating a full service flight from Jet airways from Delhi and was at Bay 5. Incidently this flight did not look full.

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 4:05 pm Post subject:

METAR

While there are no NOTAMS available for PNQ, there are none which are of much concern about BLR.

The weather looks like below,

VAPO 120930Z 23010KT 6000 SCT020 SCT030 BKN100 30/21 Q1004 TEMPO 3000 RA=

SPECI VOBL 121016Z 27017KT 4000 HZ BKN006 SCT020 OVC080 26/17 Q1007 NOSIG=

BLR has a SPECI METAR which means something is not really in line with expectation ?

VT-IEY was pushed back 10mins before time.

I would resist from writing about PNQ since I have written a lot about the airport before.

I shall write about how the flight was later in the day.

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:40 pm Post subject:

My plane arrived at 1630hrs and docked at gate 2 aerobridge. They started a slow boarding + a row wise boarding at 1640, which was very quick and boarding was complete by 1700. I guess it was a delay by 6E standards, more so because there was a long walk involved till the aerobridge.

The regular 6E affair, gaga over early boarding and being ready for departure happened and we were chocks off at 1705 and taxied to rwy 28 quickly powering up and taking off in the cloudy skies over PNQ in the westerly direction, turning left and joining Whisky-28 as the airway is called to BLR.

The flight was uneventful, clouds changed colors from Black to white as we went southwards.

I asked for corn chips - Lime & Mint and Nimbu Pani and to my astonishment both were available so I munched on it.

Pilot came on PA again informing about our cruising altitude which was FL350 and that we would start descend around 1805 hours and expect touchdown around 1825.

The descend was beautiful, the typical BLR monsoon descent where there are a lot of clouds all across and then you suddenly see land and so on.

After a lot of loops and turns, we landed nicely on rwy 27. I think this was my first on rwy 27, but I am not sure.

I had jotted down the below flights that I could see at BLR

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:56 pm Post subject:

The pilot announced we were 189 souls on board, considering 6 crew, that was till 183 pax ,which more likely is 180 pax + 3 infants ! a full flight

I have also realized that not taking G8 has been a good decision, they came in late.

G8 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

The new terminal

20130612_182924 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

Straight into the eyes of another IndiGo

20130612_182842 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

Now the final question, How do I rate this ?

I definitely rate this as good

Web checkin - 5/5
Airport Exp - 5/5
(They were very quick at the counter, inspite of 3 flights )
Boarding - 4/5
(Could have been improved)
On Time - 5/5
Inflight meal - 4/5
(I got what I want, but I m still not satisfied with the quality)
De-planning - 5/5

What else does one need ? Another IndiGo flight tomorrow. and I am expecting a sharklet aircraft and I have my reasons for it

jbalonso777 · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 9:50 pm Post subject:

Nice TR sir.
Forgive my ignorance, but it was indeed VT-IGW which operated your flight, correct?
And second, are you sure it was VT-JBJ? JGJ has Konnect decals. And B is quite close to G on the keyboard too!

Looking forward to the return!

Regards
Jish
_________________
http://www.youtube.com/c/JishnuBasu777

ameya · Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:01 pm Post subject:

Nimish · Posted: Thu Jun 13, 2013 4:07 pm Post subject:

Nice report Ameya - and it's great that 6E is able to manage such full flights despite so much competition on these sectors. Hope the pre-sales meeting at BLR went well and we get to see you here more often Smile

_________________
We miss you Nalini!

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

Thank you, sir - for yet another lovely trip report. I find it amazing as how a busy person as you, are able to take time out to type in lovely trip reports almost as soon as you are done with the trips. I wish I were like that - I wish I had your flair, and your promptness! This had some of the usual Ameya gems such as the one Jishnu has also commended, ``To have a trip planned, when you are just about to finish the last of your TRs of your previous trip is a dream come true.'' Yes Sir, it feels exactly like that. That was an excellent start to a lovely trip report. A corporate account account on MakeMyTrip.com - does this give your company substantial discounts? From the golden times of yore, companies have had corporate accounts on specific airlines - for an experienced aviation person as you, you would perhaps be able to tell us better (on qualitative terms, since most of the quantitative terms would be under a still non-disclosure agreement) - if all other factors remained the same? In other words, how does the sheer flexibility in choosing the airline - at a discount, compare with tthe overall discount itself on MakeMyTrip? Second, if all other factors remained the same - a convenient flight on airline XYZ with a corporate MakeMyTrip booking, versus the same flight with a corporate account on airline XYZ?
This part had all the ingredients for greedy people like me - minute planning details, intricate details about the rotations, METARs, pax details, and the like.
I too noticed the PNQ departure gate landside to be on the extreme right (near the Arrivals) on 09 Jun 2013, as you have written. And I wondered whether I had goofed up!
And Ameya Sir - please...even the `old Prof' thought had me in splits, neither am I old, nor am I a Prof!
Keep it up Sir...this report was really great! I also liked the SG Sr and SG Jr part Smile

Cheers, Sumantra.

ameya · Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:32 am Post subject:

Thanks Nimish - I am not sure when my next trip is but as I came back thinking I have no travel planned for next two weeks atleast, my mailbox has an email stating I should plan a trip to the east. I am not sure if that would materialize, but lets see.

@Suamantra Sir !

- Many thanks for your kind words as always.

As for corporate on MMT, for a small company like ours, its only the credit period. Corporates try and get an extended credit period that's it. For some of my previous companies where the staff was over 10k and travel was frequent, there were discounts and credit. So it all depends on your size and frequency of booking the tickets.
The corporate account rescheduling charges are half of regular on corporate accounts and in cases NIL.

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

Thanks, Sir - this gave me a new perspective on how OLTAs also have corporate policies - this was all new for me!
Cheers, Sumantra.