V-Flyer

I've got a trip to Asia coming up that is going to end up with me coming back to London from Pune. No direct flights to LHR as far as I can see, and I'm going to end up with a 5-7 hour late evening layover at either Mumbai or Delhi given the options that I have xx( :0 . To the best of my knowledge, lounges in India aren't universally great, so can anyone advise what the best (or least worst) of these would be:

BOM - flying Jet
BOM - flying VS
DEL - flying BA

Cheers
RC

Lufthansa flies from Pune to Frankfurt as an option.

But if you do have to transfer I'd choose Delhi strongly over Mumbai. While BOM airport is being updated, DEL is new and the lounges and airport facilities there are significantly better, bigger and newer. Besides the transfers at BOM are awful ...

Thanks Slinky. DEL it is then. Had a look at the lounge and it's not too terrible. Anyway, need a bit of help to bump up my BA tier points to get to AG, those runs to BHD were not quite going to get me over the line...

I did look at the Lufthansa option, but don't really fancy hanging around till 5.25am the next day.

I have to go to Pune regularly and fly out of Pune on the Jet 9W 0366 which leaves at 0745 and gives approx 3hrs in Delhi before VS301 leaves. The lounge is a shared lounge being one of the Plaza lounges and its not too bad. As I have said in a previous post security at Pune can be a nightmare for your carry on as depending on their mood they can end up wanting everything metallic out of it.

I'm going in and out of BOM in 10 days time and according to VS there is offically no lounge there for UC VS passengers. There is a Mumbai lounge thread here.

RC, it would be useful to hear how BA perform on this route, I did it a couple of times from Delhi with BA before company policy insisted we use Jet Airways....always useful to bump up the BA status too...... ):

Jon

Well Jon, my TR record recently has been a bit shabby, but as you asked so nicely... I haven't done CW for many years in any case, so I will certainly do my best to oblige...

On a similar (related to this trip) note - can anyone give an opinion on what Air China's long haul J product is like? Their website has some ancient pictures that look like they are from the 80s, and surely, SURELY, can't be the current offering (beige cloth seats, no personal IFE, clearly no flat bed). For various personal reasons, their Saturday evening LHR-PEK flight might be my only realistic option on the 1st sector...

Quick post script to this. I'm currently sat in the ITC Hotels Green Lounge at Delhi, which is what BA uses. Not that big and the wine 'selection' is frankly dire. To quote the immortal line from Hot Fuzz 'we have.... red. And.... white.' Pretty yucky loos as well.

But the food is ok, and the fridge full of kingfisher, so given some of the places that I've been through over the course of the last week, it's not too bad.

Bloody hell. What a week. Think I might keep my feet on the ground for a little while now. Still, at least I made it to BA AG, which will help with my regular Belfast runs in future.

Zzzzzzzzz.....
RC

Oh, and BTW, I didn't go the initial route via PEK like I suggested, I chose HKG instead. Which was rather fortunate given that some of my US based colleagues did fly in there, only to have their connection to DLC cancelled, and then basically end up being messed around for the next day. Certainly bears out the current reports that Beijing is one of the world's worst airports for delays/cancellations.

And I experienced my first aborted landing today. At no more than 500 feet, and the pilot decided that he couldn't see the runway! Couldn't have been easy the second time either, as he was banking left and right until about 5 seconds before we landed. Fun way to start the day...

Is the BA lounge at Mumbai no good? I am flying BA 1st to Mumbai later this year. I thought there was a 1st, CW, gold, silver galleries lounge?