It’s been a really, really, really hectic past few months, so these posts have come with some delay.
We flew to Kolkata on a redeye AirDeccan flight out of Mumbai. It was the first time I have flown AirDeccan and I can safely say it sets the standard for a no-frills airline. I ranted about AirAsia in a past post, but Air Deccan makes Air Asia seem like a luxury carrier. To start with, AirDeccan essentially reserves the right to cancel any flight for any reason it deems fit (including it not being booked to capacity) without any liability except the cost paid for the ticket. So AirDeccan sells tickets 6 months in advance but if on the day of departure overhead costs of operating the flight outweigh the income earned by paying flyers, management can simply cancel the flight…which it often does. A cursory glance at their live online flight status table clearly confirms that under “typical” operation at least 10% of their flights get canceled, and almost all are delayed. The result is passengers who are left stranded and frustrated. I consider us lucky, because of the 4 sectors we’ve flown with AirDeccan two were delayed 2+ hours, but luckily none were canceled. A canceled flight would have been disastrous because AirDeccan makes no assurances of proper transfers. So if you miss your connecting flight because their plane came in late, you’re stranded at your transfer point. One last rant, I’ve never seen so many seats crammed into an Airbus A-320 before. If you’re over 6 feet tall, good luck! To be fair though, AirDeccan tickets are often half the price of their nearest LLC competitor…which unfortunately for my travel stress level, keeps me as a repeat customer.