Mumbai: Air India embarked on a new voyage Friday after the Tata Group took over the airline from the Government of India. I took a 9pm flight from Mumbai to find out whether anything had changed since the Maharaja's takeover.
One of the things the new management will focus on is better on-time performance of flights. Our flight took off around 9:10 pm and reached Goa at 10:05 pm -- an almost on-schedule arrival.
Apart from this, a special announcement by the pilots took place before landing. This announcement is a part of an official order by the operations department.
The announcement goes: “Dear Guests, this is your Captain (Name) speaking. Welcome aboard this historic flight, which marks a special event. Today, Air India officially becomes a part of the Tata Group again, after seven decades. We look forward to serving you on this and every Air India flight with renewed commitment and passion”.
Passengers in our flight cheered and clapped at this announcement, showing the great excitement among them.
Another small change that has taken place is that the passengers are now addressed as ‘guests’.
Air India served vegetarian meals (sandwich and juice) to all passengers, unlike many other domestic airlines.
Enhanced meal service is one of the things introduced by the Tatas. Non-vegetarian meals were served on the AI191 (Mumbai-Newark) flight and five Mumbai-Delhi flights on Friday. This is likely to be expanded to more flights in a staggered and phased manner. Non- vegetarian meals have resumed in the economy class after a gap of four years.
Apart from these changes, not much is different, given the fact that Tata Sons has just been handed the reins to Air India. The group has already made it clear it is going to focus on smart and well-groomed cabin crew members.
28/01/22 Mustafa Shaikh/India Today
0 comments:
Post a Comment