Review: Etihad Airways Economy 777-200LR Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi
Review: Jet Airways Economy 737-800 Abu Dhabi to Pune
Review: Jet Airways Economy 737-800 Pune to Abu Dhabi
Review: US Pre-Clearance Facility Abu Dhabi
Review: Etihad Airways Economy 777-200LR Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles

YOUTUBE: Etihad Airways: Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi
YOUTUBE: Jet Airways: Abu Dhabi to Pune
YOUTUBE: Jet Airways: Pune to Abu Dhabi
YOUTUBE: Etihad Airways: Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles

This review will generally be short because I couldn’t take too many pictures because of the time of day and recording restrictions at both airports. But let’s get to the review of this jet airways.

This is just walking through the duty-free sections of terminal 3. One important thing to note that caused me a mistake was that terminal-wise, Jet Airways is listed to be at terminal 1. However, pretty much all of the narrow-body jet Airways flights to India depart from the remote stands from terminal 3, which is Etihad’s Terminal. Thankfully there is a convenient and open airside walkway between the terminals. It’s about 10 minutes one way, so I walked all the way from the terminal 3 transit to Terminal 1 only to check the boards and realize that my flight was going to be leaving from terminal 3. Well, at least I got somewhat of an exercise out of it.

Remote stands mean that we would be taking buses to the gate. We were supposed to depart around 10:15 PM but didn’t end up boarding until about 11 PM. One thing I noticed about Jet Airways’s narrow-body boarding process was that it’s basically a messy free for all. Premiere Class was not allowed to board first, but rather the boarding announcement means that everyone lined up at the same time. Then we all took buses to the gate. The below picture was the only picture I got of the plane itself. I started to take a video, but one of the ground staff approached me and told me to stop and delete the video, which I did. I had an iPhone so I could have easily recovered the video from the “recently deleted” folder, but the video was pretty bad anyways since it was incomplete.

Jet Airways

AUH-PNQ Boeing 737-800W

After boarding, I found my seat behind the wing. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the seat, but let’s talk about it. Legroom was definitely tighter than what it was on my first flight. I am 5′ 10, anytime” and even with my very thin backpack, legroom was definitely an issue. My legs didn’t touch the seat in front of me, but there was barely any room for me to move my legs without bumping into the next seat. So I tried to maximize my legroom by keeping my backpack behind my feet rather than under the seat in front of me. It was thin, so it would definitely fit there. For the rest of the flight, this is where I would be, since I didn’t have the need to get up at any time.

Soon enough, it was time to leave and depart. I always love the engine start on the 737s because they are so loud and powerful. But after startup, we had a little bit of a taxi to runway 13R. Where we would be departing from.

A gorgeous Etihad A340-600 F1 livery departed before us for Tokyo, so it was definitely fun to see that go. After that, there was us! We had a powerful and long roll for departure. Our climb was quite bumpy, but that’s because of the hot weather that Abu Dhabi has. Those bumps lasted all the way up to our cruising altitude. But after that, the crew began their service. Unlike my last flight where a snack was served before the main meal, there was only one service, and that was the dinner service, which was very, very good!

Dinner boxed

Dinner unboxed

Let’s start from the top left. The pasta was dressed in some oil that gave it some taste and the bell peppers also made it tasty. The cake to the left was great too. Not the best dessert ever, but it was a soaked cake which I love and it made it very enjoyable. The al ain bottle is just water. The aluminum covered container below that had dahi which is basically an Indian version of Greek Yogurt. I love it! Now to the highlight of the whole meal. The main course was very flavorful and fantastic.  I noticed that the main course was the exact same as what was served on my Etihad airways flight earlier:

Back to my meal below:

The main course, which I was talking about, was the exact same as the first flight’s first meal, but this one was very good. The paneer which is the reddish curry to the left had a slight spice to it which I loved and the curry that the paneer was cooked in was very flavorful too. Also, unlike my last flight, the paneer was actually soft and not hard like the last flight. The crew did a good job heating the food and the cooks did a great job making the food. The same can be said about the lentil curry to the left.  They cabin crew offered a vegetarian or non-vegetarian option and I opted for the vegetarian option because for religious reasons I was vegetarian for 10 days.

Overall, that was a very good meal. For the next couple hours, I just sat and did work on my laptop since there was nothing to record really. We eventually reached the part where we started our descent and there were little to no bumps on arrival. However, the visibility was pretty low I’d say. It’s definitely now low enough for CAT III conditions landing, but it was definitely a lower visibility than what’s usual. We had a slightly rough touchdown around 3 AM and had a quick taxi to the gate. Pune has many remote stands and only a few jetways, so I’m glad that we got one of the gates with a jetway on it.Now Pune airport is VERY, VERY strict about videos or photos, so after landing and taking a photo of the wing, I did not take any photos or videos inside the terminal. Here is the cloudy approach of the aircraft:

Overall, I was mostly impressed. For this trip, I was expecting Etihad’s food to be better than Jet Airways’ food, but that turned out to be the opposite. The food wasn’t too oily, and it also tasted genuine. The seat could use some more legroom, but ultimately, that’s not what the deciding factor always had to be. I would definitely fly again with Jet Airways, and thankfully I am on the return trip with Jet back to Abu Dhabi 🙂