Please Switch Off Your Mobile Phones Now

I have seen many people working furiously at airports and in flights. I am not one of them. When I leave home sometimes it feels like a real effort to get out with thousand and one things pending, which are urgent as well. But once I am out of the house I like to leave things behind. I thought that was the purpose of travel anyway.

I start relaxing at the airport itself as I usually check in way ahead of time. Still there would be calls going on, sometimes related to work as well. That is why I love those words which all airlines in India (and everywhere else) say- “please switch off your mobile phones now.”

Time to relax!

Once the flight takes off, be it SpiceJet, IndiGo, Indian Airlines, Go Air or any other I am almost always left with nothing to do which is usually good thing. That is why I want a break, because otherwise there are way too many things that simply need to be done.

Once in air I would prefer to read, day dream, watch a movie etc and it feels so different from the daily routine. I often feel that it is in air that I am able to disconnect from my day to day life and it feels refreshingly good.

I have heard that some airlines wish to introduce cell phone services in flight. Or is it that some of them globally have already introduced it? I am not sure. I am watching this development without any enthusiasm. After all, if I cannot stay disconnected for half a day what kind of life I am leading? And to think of it, cell phones anyway came into existence when I was already working for many years! I used to manage well before and I can still mange without them for a while!

Low Cost Air Carriers of India

I remember the days when there was only one airline in India- Air India! Prices were sky high and air travel market was a really small one.

Around 2002-2003 we saw more airlines being allowed to operate schedule flights and as they say, the rest is history.

I am a big fan of low cost airlines. For a two hour flight within India, I want to get there by the cheapest fare possible and I really do not care about a meal. After all if you have taken a flight a few times, all the airline meals start tasting the same after a while. If there is one thing that I do care about, it is on time arrival of a flight and that is where I think IndiGo scores.  There flights are usually on time and they have a professional outlook. At least that is how they come across to me. I only remember one IndiGo flight I took that was terribly late!

Want to fly low cost?

My next most preferred airline is SpiceJet, I think they have decent food on board and mostly get there on time. I feel their branding is quite ambiguous but they do an adequate job of getting me there. I have not compared the on time performance of IndiGo and SpiceJet but my opinion is that IndiGo is better. But I should go and check it out for a fact; this could be in the end just an impression!

I have very little personal experience of flying with GoAir hence I can’t say much about them. I have taken a few Air India flights and some of them have been surprisingly good.

In the end if I am getting similar fares, I will go with IndiGo but at all the times the lowest fare wins!

How to Grab Cheap Air Tickets?

I wish there was a secret formula for grabbing cheap air tickets and only I knew about it! But unfortunately there is no such thing and I too have to rely on common sense to get cheap flight tickets.

One obvious way to get cheap tickets is to fly with low cost carries like SpiceJet, Indigo, GoAir, etc. But sometimes if you look on a comparison site you will be surprised to see that that even full service airlines like Indian Airlines (or should it be Air India only now?) also offer lower prices for their early morning and late night flights. So if you are flexible about timings and if service is important to you, you can try this out as well.

Arrivals Lounge at an International Airport

Another tested route is to book early, if we book closer to the date we are obviously going to pay more! Sometimes airlines offer promotional fares to certain destinations and they are really a good bargain! But the trouble is in keeping up with such offers!

Internationally sometimes it can be beneficial if we buy late as airlines offer discounts if they have been unable to sell their tickets but I am not sure how true this is of India!

If you could be flexible about your flight dates this can also result in cheaper price as weekend flights are more expensive than weekday flights! I remember flying back to T3 once on a Wednesday and not only had I paid less, the airport was also much less crowded.

And we all do compare the fares using search engines like Makemytrip.com. This one is so obvious that I left it for the last. But it is a bit conflicting because sometimes I see airlines claiming that the cheapest fares are available only from their websites! What do you think?