I had a long weekend and decided to make the most of it. After drawing and re-drawing plans, I decided to head to Udaipur for a short trip. However, with three days to go for the weekend, most trains and flights were booked. This is when I "landed" on the GoAir site. Tickets to AMD and back were booked for around a thousand bucks. It was to be the inaugural flight for GoAir.

I left home early in the morning and was at the airport well in time for the departure. GoAir flights use Terminal 1A at BOM, which is shared by Indian Airlines (IC) and Kingfisher (IT). There were a slew of departures lined up. Almost 90% of them were IC, although there were a couple from IT and Alliance Air. I had a quick breakfast after completing the check-in formalities and settled down awaiting the security check. Strangely, our flight was nowhere on the departures board!! Maybe they forgot about GoAir totally Finally after an endless wait, we were called in for security check which was done in no time. I sat down in the departure area looking at various departures from 1A. Now, Go Air planes are parked far away from the terminal and therefore passengers have to take a bus to board the aircraft. The departure time was five minutes away but there was no sign of the bus!! Finally, it arrived ten minutes after the departure time. We drove around the parked IC and IT planes to a remote parking bay where our Go Air aircraft, an A320 was parked. I boarded the plane and found my seat - 4A - a window seat thankfully! As it was the inaugural flight, Jeh Wadia - the MD for GoAir was also onboard along with a senior official from Airbus.

It was now fifteen minutes past the departure time and there were only 20-odd passengers on board. Jeh Wadia started getting restless now and was speaking animatedly into his cellphone. Another bus load of passengers arrived but this wasn't the final one! Mr Wadia was now positively wild and the cabin crew  and the ground staff got a earful from him! Finally, the last passengers were on board and we were pushed back thirty minutes after the scheduled departure. The taxi run was short and we soon lined up on the runway. The pilots revved up the engines and we were on our way. Twenty seconds later, we were airborne. We banked right and continued to climb on our way to AMD. Soon, the stewardesses started distributing drinking water to passengers. Strangely, instead of giving out those 200ml bottles, they were pouring them into a teeny weeny plastic cup! The weather was calm and sunny and the flight was silk smooth. The captain came online and apologized for the delay. There was no provision for sale of food or drinks on board. Good thing that I had breakfast at the airport

Soon we were on the outskirts of AMD and we began a series of banks to line up for landing. As we descended to around 1000ft, I could see a metre guage passenger train trundling along in the same direction as us. I was to take this same route later in the evening on my way to Udaipur. The landing was smooth and we came to a halt at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport - Ahmedabad. Overall, it was a good flight apart from the delay.

My ratings for Go Air:

Aircraft: 3/5

Inflight service: 3/5

Punctuality: 2/5

Passenger handling: 3/5