I traveled on Jet Airways from New York City to Chennai this week, here are my thoughts from the trip.
I was curious to see how Jet Airways fared as an international airline and was pleasantly surprised to see that they did quite well. I liked the relatively new aircraft - Airbus A330 with monitors on all seats for flight entertainment (unlike a few airlines that have monitors only in the EU-US leg) . There was a decent collection of Hollywood movies and an elaborate collection of Desi movies. The music collection was amazing - it included old Talat Mahmood songs and a recap of Geet Mala.
It was nice to see Indian pilots captaining the flights. Captain Rahul Nagar, the pilot for the NYC-MAA flight made one of the smoothest landings that I’ve experienced at the Chennai airport.
What I most hated about the flight was the food, which was rather bland. I had opted for vegetarian and found that both the dinner and lunch had almost the same menu - Dal, Rice and Paneer/Palak served with a Roti, salad and yoghurt. Being an Indian airline, I expected better fare both in terms of taste and variety.
The other thing that Jet Airways could improve upon is the 3+ hours stopover at Brussels. For a technical stop on a NYC-MAA flight, a maximum wait of 2 hours is acceptable.
But overall, I had a good experience and would definitely recommend the airline.
What I liked: Relatively new aircraft, music selection, Indian pilots
Did not like: Horrible food, 3+ hours wait at Brussels
