I usually don’t know how to start a piece. if I can even call
this a ‘piece’. This one is going to be about my journey from Mumbai to
Bangalore which happened on the 1st day of this year.
Flight journeys have always been normal for me. Since I
(used to) study in Bangalore but live in Navi mumbai, I frequently fly between
the two places.
In the mumbai airport, there are 2 terminals for domestic
departures and 1 for international. Up until very recently all the domestic
flights would only depart from the domestic terminals 1A and 1B. but now Air
India and Vistara airlines also depart from the international terminal 2. I
found this out the hard way, when I arrived at the domestic terminals for my
Vistara flight to Bangalore, only to be informed by airport security that
Vistara actually flies out of terminal 2. Imagine my surprise.
I have a habit of always arriving at the airport at least 2
hours before my flights departure and that helped me at this point in time. I
was able to board a bus (run by the Airport management itself) which went to the international terminal right then,
and reach there on time.
Now the last time I had been here, it looked pretty normal.
But they seemed to have made some significant changes, both structural and aesthetic,
which looked amazing! Long tower like objects designated with letters stood
before various check in kiosks, each section being enormous in area. The design
reminded me of the Changi international Airport, Singapore which was one of the
best looking airports I had ever been in. After security check, there were a
whole bunch of travellators which make covering the long distances between
security checks and boarding gates easy as a pie (or a piece of cake or
whatever gets your tummy rolling). So you get to stand and look at all view instead of walking the distance which is good since the airport is huge and you have to walk a lot. like a lot.
Onto the flight journey then! Now, I was under the
assumption that Vistara was a low cost carrier, so I was very surprised when
they served the in fight meals which were like the real deal. Even the box in
which the meal came in looked nice and you could tell by the looks of it that a
lot of thought had been put into designing it. I had asked for the non-veg
option so I got a roll like thing which was filled with chicken. It tasted like
God. Like literally, awesome. There was dahi vada too, which was delicious as
well. Rasmalai for dessert which was great! Overall, the food was an A+ affair. You can't say that for every other carrier these days.
A couple of pointers regarding the aircraft itself. It was
an Airbus, but I couldn’t tell which model. It could have been a revamped
version of the A320 series itself as they are the most commonly used aircrafts
for domestic flights by carriers like Air India and Jet Airways. The newer elements included a sleeker latch
for the tray tables and a no-electronic devices symbol on the overhead panel
and the plane looked new all around. it could have been a custom design, like how the carriers personalize their fleet.
