This time, I was in harmony with my intestinal flora and looking forward to the trip. The plane looked new and very good, with lie-flat pods in business and modern burgundy-and-cream seating in economy in a 2-4-2 configuration. On the rather interminable taxi out from T1 to the runway, I spotted Etihad’s 777ER taking off — the very same thrice-weekly flight I was originally supposed to be on.
Take off, a towel run, and then straight into dinner with no menu, just a choice of “chicken, fish or veg”. The dinner selection looked impressive, with a miniature tablecloth on a tray, metal cutlery and a cloth napkin that looked almost good enough to steal, but the food was a bit of a disappointment: the chicken’s sauce was a pale Western approximation of a curry, just a sauce with turmeric really, and the raita tasted like it was made with sweetened low-fat yogurt. The salad was watery and the chapattiesque thing was thick and greasy, and only the finishing notes lifted the average a bit: a Magnum ice cream bar and a bag of Indian after-dinner mint spice mix. SQ wins this round.
Jet’s inflight entertainment system is really good, probably the best I’ve used interfacewise and far better than SQ’s Wiseman. It’s fast, responsive, easy to navigate and intuitive, as important settings like volume, brightness and screen on/off have their own buttons on the bottom of the screen, which can easily be manipulated by touch alone. The screen is nice and big, and there’s a pretty decent selection of programs, if with an understandable Indian slant. Today’s selections: episodes of Rome, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, The Office (US) and then a lengthy trawl through the dedicated Ghazals section of the music selection, where I drifted off to Lotus-land listening to Ghulam Ali. I was introduced to this amazing singer by trash novelist Shobhaa De‘s works, where the mango-breasted heroines rave about the aphrodisiac properties of his songs, and while they took a while to grow on me I’m starting to agree: a few bars, and I feel like I’m smoking opium and crushed pearls from a jewel-encrusted hookah while watching Hyderabad’s finest nautch girls dance. Score one for Jet.
Service was quite good also: Jet’s crew aren’t quite as dolled up as the SQ girls, nor are their faces contorted into a permanent rictus of a smile, but everything does work quite well. There was no water/drink service during the “night” while the lights are off, but I snagged a miniature water bottle from the galley and they did do a juice run before descent. Tie with SQ on this one.
The one big downside to Jet from SIN, though, is the terrible flight timing. Arrival into DEL is after 2 AM (meaning you’ll be lucky to get to your hotel by 4 AM), and the return flight wastes a full day by leaving DEL at 8 AM and arriving in SIN around 5 PM. And the smaller downside is the lack of alliance mileage, although I did manage to park the miles in my comatose Northwest account. Now to figure out a way to do something useful with the ~7500 miles I have in there…
Drifting Clouds 片雲の風 