Review Air India Business Class from Vancouver to Delhi

I recently flew Air India Business class from Vancouver to Delhi. In this post I review how I booked it and the details of the flight.

Booking

As described in my earlier post about Delta's IT fiasco, I had to book a Seattle to Delhi flight on short notice after Delta denied me boarding on a 7-month-old ticket. The options that Delta representatives offered me were poor in both terms of value and comfort - routing through Denver and London for instance and costing more than $2800 round trip for economy. I refused the offers with the best grimace I could offer in that situation.

I next tried to find a good cash rate on Google Flights instead but none of the options looked appealing. I consider paying anything more than $800 for one-way in Economy to India and $1400 roundtrip as bad deals unless it's an emergency. What I ended up doing is booking via Aeroplan and that too in Business class. 

I paid a total 85000 Aeroplan points + 46.20 Canadian Dollars (~$36) for the one-way ticket. The routing was via Vancouver. The Seattle to Vancouver was in Air Canada Economy on a De Havilland propellor plane but the Vancouver to Delhi was in Air India Business class in Boeing 77W.

Air Canada Seattle to Vancouver flight

Flight

The flight ended up being an early one for me, leaving Seattle at 6 am. I booked it late into the night and planned on reaching the airport by 3:30 am and so didn't get much sleep. But at the airport, the TSA did not start manning the checkpoints until 4 am so long lines had formed by then. Fortunately, they did open TSA Precheck posts soon after, which I was able to avail and move quickly to the gate.

The Air Canada flight attendant was quick to remind that masks were still required on flights to and from Canada, even though US had recently made masks optional on flights. When in Canada I made through the international transit area and headed to my gate to confirm the time of the flight and my seat as the reported time for the flight was off by 5 hours the usual 10:15 am time and I had not been able to assign myself a seat online. But the gate was deserted and the screens agreed with the 3 pm departure time. Having reached the gate around 7:15 am, there was still a long way to my flight, so I headed to the lounges available to me. I had access to Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge because of my business class booking. You can find my review here - Review: Vancouver Airport Lounges.

A little before my flight I made it to the gate and found an agent to help me. The agent was helpful and got me my boarding pass and the seat I wanted, but then had somebody on the phone who asked a bunch of questions about my award booking. It appeared that they did not get many Aeroplan award bookings on this flight.

The total flight time for the Air India flight was just over 14h as it still had access to the Russian airspace unlike its North American counterparts which had to make stops in Europe or take circuitous routes to reach India and thus took longer.

Seats

The aircraft had 4 seats in first class in 1-2-1 arrangement and 35 seats in Business class in 2-3-2 arrangement. Overall, not a very private Business class experience as there was no partition between the seats. There were curtains next to each aisle that were drawn later to give some semblance of privacy. The Business class in this flight was mostly empty though as there was only 1 other passenger with me in the cabin behind the pantry.

The seats on this aircraft were a bit dated but still comfortable. I could turn it into a full lie flat bad and sleep through most of my 14 hour journey.

Air India Business class window seats

Air India Business class middle seats

Service

The service was quite good on the flight as was the food. I ordered a custom orange juice drink and the flight attendant had it served for me. The amenity kit on this flight wasn't anything fancy but was still kind of cute and exhaustive. It had amenities from Khadi India and included a lip balm, a moisturizer, face wash, citric hand sanitizer, sandalwood soap, a toothpaste, eau de toilette and a small face mirror.

Air India amenity kit

Air India amenity kit

I was also offered an Air India pajama set which I found very snug and it also had the cute Air India Maharaja icon on it. I enjoyed wearing it and was excited to take it home.

Air India pajama set

In Flight Entertainment

The inflight entertainment was quite basic. It felt like the old java apps of the day. The screen sizes were also rather small compared to where the rest of the international business class trend. Hopefully with Air India under new management it can improve on the seats and the entertainment aspects.

Air India In-flight-entertainment movie selection

Air India In-flight-entertainment maps views

Air India In-flight-entertainment map view over Russia

Air India In-flight-entertainment camera selection

Air India In-flight-entertainment outside camera

Final take

Overall, flying Air India Business class was a good use of my Aeroplan points considering that it was booked on such a short notice. I wouldn't rank it high in the luxury aspect of business class travel, especially when comparing to where its competitors are, but I would definitely rank it high in the service, food and amenities area. I will look forward to how the new TATA management improves on the areas where it currently lacks.