Worth a Lemon! That is what NDTV Profit qouted an airline industry expert quoting the JET-SAHARA $500 Million deal as. What the anonymous expert meant was that JET bought SAHARA at astornomic prices for something which was worth a lemon(can also be read as peanuts). You must be wondering why I'm talking about this deal. Is it such a Big Deal! Yeap. It is a Big Deal as it affects my flying in the future in more ways than one. Being a new entrant into now a not-so-elite-flyer club and being all exicted after my first few trips- "Yeh Dil Mange More".
Consider this. I had to travel a good 15 hrs over the Chennai-Bangalore-Belguam route by 2 trains. And after a few days it took me just 5 hrs over the same route albeit in the reverse order, by plane(the 5hrs including a delay of 1.5 hrs). And did I feel tired at the end of the latter trip. Nop. I didn't sweat a single drop!
Now, enough of the prolouge. Let me take you into that 5hrs of experience of mine both inside the small bird shapped alloy cabin and outside it.
I reached the calm Belguam airport around 8:15AM. Being a small airport and only four flights going in and out of it; it had at first glance a deserted look.But then you go inside the small single storeyed building for your check-in and you realise that the place is not deserted after all. You see souls waiting for the flight from Bangalore to arrive, with some souls being anxious, may be its their first too and some others cool and composed with a touch of arrogance evincing a sense of having flown a zillion times.
After a wait of 20mins I heard the sound of rotar blades chopping air with that distinct sound that you always tried to 'find' in the sky as a child and which on finding led to overjoy in you.
The plane touched down with a puff of tyre burn smoke. The landing looked perfect.The plane was then taxied to the place where I, along with others was supposed to board and to be alighted by the ones coming from Bangalore. Now I could see the metal bird clearly. It was of Russian make(this I knew from my visits to Deccan Airways website, well before the intial thought of taking a flight struck me).The flight was named DN205(BGM to BLR 08:45AM).
Rewind<< !Between my arriving and boarding I went through my security check. A simple one involving running of a metal detector around your body and some manual frisking. After the security check was the baggage weighing and tagging of the baggage as cabin or hand.
Stop Rewinding[]! Back to Play> !
On boarding the plane I felt that the place was bit too congested for 45 passengers, but the airlines thought otherwise and hence shoved in 45 along with the 2 pilots and the cutie into the "hollow pipe". My advice to people with Clusterophobia. Beware!!!
Then comes the announcement from the cutie on how to tie ones seat belt,location of the emer exits,an instruction to go though the manual placed in their respective seat pouches and the intro of the pilots and the cutie herself. I gave scant attention to what the cutie was saying as I was too engrossed with the engine to the right of my seat(it was free seating and anybody could have any seat of his/her choice). The annoucement was follwed with the plane taxing to the runway for take-off and hearing of mushy conversation between the ATC and the pilot. After a momentary stop, the plane moves across the runway at high speeds and then within no time you are in the air. Three Cheers to The Wright Brothers for their invention!!!
Huge buildings that were momouth sized when we are on ground were transformed into waffer sized objects. Large lakes looked like droplets of water splattered across a floor. Cars and Buses became microscopic. Two-Wheelers became invisible. And train tracks looked like a long slender snake, swerving across a flat surface, being straight on some streches and S-shaped on some other. Mountains which would be thousands of feet in height looked liliput. Large cultivated acres of land were together converted to the squares on a sudoku chart. And you know what the best of all the observation was. It was the clouds. Cutting across that light weight matter of the atmosphere was like cutting a cream cake. It was as smooth as that!
Just when you started to take in these new feelings comes in an announcement -"We are about to land at Bangalore Airport in a few Minutes. Please fasten your seatbelts and blah..blah..blah..blah". Bladdy! All my wonderful feelings of flying were lost in a, well puff of clouds! It starts sinking in. That at the end of the day, all that goes north towards the Sky must come down south to Earth. The coming to Earth was marked by the thud sound after the landing gear touched the runway.
Fastforward >> !This fastforward has the alighting from the plane, short ride on a Air Deccan bus from the plane parking area to the Arrival-checkout area and the final baggage claiming. It also has the 1 hr wait for the next flight DN131(12:05PM-01:05PM BLR to MAA). Being a frequent traveller on the Indian Rail system this 1 hr wait was a puny. I do not want to write much of the wait except for a already made short mention.
Let me keep the fast Fowarding going here >> !
After the 1 hr delay I finally checked-in into DN131 at 1:00PM. The same sequence of announcements,takeoff,feelings,puff-of-clouds thingy and landing follwed in a series before the landing at the Chennai airport at 2:00PM. Back to the @@#$ed-up,drab,stench hole of a Chennai I said to myself.
Stop the Fowarding. Stop Completely[]!
posted by Akhilesh @ 3:38 AM
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