9W 311
BOM-DEL
23rd October 2006


9W 311 departs at 1750 hours, accordingly my mum and I left for the airport at 1615 hours as the airport is about 8kms from my house. I had checked-in online at 6 am and booked seats 25B for mum and 25A for me (yes I actually got up at 6 am just to book the seats but I paid a lot so had to get the best out of it). The main reason I booked this flight was to fly the new jet Airways aircraft with in-flight entertainment so I was super excited… We reached the airport at about 1645 with some moderate traffic on the way…


We entered terminal 1B after the security guard checked the e-ticket and we were on our way to get the bags screened. Check-in was smooth… the staff at the counter were polite and smiling which makes the journey a little bit better… with the boarding passes in hand we headed towards security check. There was a really long line for security check… but the line moved fast so was seated waiting for boarding in about 20 minutes.


Finally an announcement for boarding was made. What I noticed was that Kingfisher Airlines has started using the ramps at Terminal 1B (usually they use 1A) I also saw that both the runways were in use… runway 27 was used for landing while runway 14 was used for take-off… as we were getting on the bus to take us to the aircraft an Etihad A330-200 took-off from runway 27 (yes this is contradictory to what I mentioned before but they must have changed the use of the runways.) The bus took us to the aircraft and as we approached it I was very upset to see that it was a Boeing 737-900 instead of the Boeing 737-800 with winglets…. This really pissed me off… but then things were better as we boarded the flight…


After being seated I forgot to see the registration of the aircraft so I asked the flight attendant and she replied ‘900’ I said ‘no not the series, the registration’ and she replied ‘Golf Delta’. Soon enough the doors closed and we were right on-time. The safety announcements started and were the usual. Engine start was great! The sound was just really awesome! And the flaps were set for take-off. As taxied to runway 27, on the way I saw the international terminal where Emirates a332, Gulf Air a320, Ethiopian Airways b757, Air India b747s and a310s were parked.


We were instantly cleared for take-off, we taxied onto the runway and slowly the engines started accelerating and were roaring away! We shot up into the sky with the weird feeling in the stomach… the flaps were retracted…we then started our turn to the right… seeing the sunset from high up above is just and experience in itself! It was just amazing and breath-taking. The F/As started serving the welcome drinks which were lime juice and orange juice. Soon the seat belt sign turned off and in no time were at 35,000 feet. The flight attendants started serving the snacks. We were served some chicken in gravy, some cutlets, and a corn-cheese puff. The chicken was chewy and over-cooked. They served Baskin and Robin’s Mango ice-cream for desert which was yummy but hard as a rock. So I managed to relish it in small baby bites. While they were serving the same flight attendant who told me the registration curiously asked me if I was a pilot with Jet Airways… which made my day!!!! After taking to a fellow passenger, I got to know that the flight to Delhi before us got cancelled so they put them on 9W 311. So I figured they substituted the 900 instead of the 800W. The flight was full absolutely packed and made it very claustrophobic!


We started our decent at about 1915 hours to Delhi again with the weird feeling in my stomach due to the sudden decrease in altitude… we soon decended and lights of Delhi were visible again an amazing sight… as we were established on the localizer the gear was lowered and I could feel the drag with the instant reduction in speed! What a feeling! and were on final by 1940 hours for runway 28. As we touched down the speed brakes and the reverse thrust were activated and the engines went into a load roar… saw a lot of grounded Indian Airlines Airbus 320s and saw an Air India a310 at the International Terminal. We taxied out of the runway and the flaps were retracted… we stopped for a few seconds and then continued our taxi for a bit and came to a complete halt. The ground service was quick in about 20 minutes we had picked up our luggage and were out of the airport.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/mongasaurabh/9W311BOMDEL

Condition of Aircraft: 8/10
Quality of food : 5/10


Trip Report for the return flight is on its way… Please do comment if you think there is room for improvement…


Regards
Saurabh


-- Edited by saurabhm_101 at 14:52, 2006-11-01