Preparation for India

I must say that the plane trip to India reminded me of many of the things I found frustrating about India-even starting out in JFK! I guess we shouldn't have been surprised, since we did fly Jet Airways, an Indian airline. (And Liz has vowed to never, ever fly with them again!) When Liz met me in JFK, we stood in line to see if we could change our seats in order to sit together on the onward flight. As we were standing in line, a Jet employee took our passports (with no explanation) to 'verify' them. Apparently everyone's passport needed to be inspected and verified before boarding, but that information wasn't deemed important enough to merit a general announcement-you had to be lucky enough to have the employee choose your passport to verify. When we got to the counter, another employee took our AA boarding passes and printed new Jet Airways boarding passes (again without bothering to explain anything). We found out later that we HAD to get new boarding passes to get on the plane, even though AA is a partner airline to Jet. [side note: the same did not apply upon our return-AA accepted my Jet boarding pass!]

Then, when we began to board the airplane, the ground staff announced that they would be boarding in rows and began to call off rows. Of course the only people who followed these directions were the white people, who remained in their seats while waiting for their rows to be called. The Indians all swarmed en mass, no matter which row they were seated in. I understand the mentality of Indians swarming for things when in India, I guess I just don't understand it when it still happens outside of India. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

The frustration didn't end, however, once we had boarded the plane. When we booked this flight, it was billed as a non-stop flight, with a brief refueling stop in Brussels. We assumed it would be a relatively quick stop and we would remain on the plane. Well, you know what they say about assuming... Upon arrival, everyone had to disembark from the plane. We were a bit concerned since we didn't have a separate boarding pass for Brussels. Then, we were a bit annoyed to find out that we didn't re-board the plane for over an hour. I'm sorry, but anytime you have to get off the plane and wait for more than an hour in the airport constitutes a LAYOVER and does NOT constitute a non-stop flight.

Luckily, the rest of the trip went smoothly. Oh, except for the crew IGNORING us (passing us by with the drink cart several times). And the entertainment system not working (and the crew not believing us that everyone on our side of the plane was having the same problem!) And them only having vegetarian food by the time they did get around to serving us. It was a RELIEF to finally land in Chennai!