Time travel on Jet Airways ... well, almost!

A few months back, there was a lot of hype and noise around airlines (at leas in India) deliberately publishing flight timings and durations that would then make it appear that the actual flight was on time, or in some cases, even ahead of time. For instance, if the actual flying time from BLR to DEL was say 2h10m, these would be published as 2h30m. So any flight that was within 2h30m was considered on or ahead of time. Airlines defended this approach on the grounds of traffic congestion and consequent ATC delays. And over time, this issue seems to have faded away in public memory.

Yesterday, however, all of this came back to me on a short flight from MAA to BLR that I was on. This was published as a 60 minutes flight, from 1620 hrs to 1720 hours. Admittedly, we pushed back about 5 minutes earlier than schedule (leaving one or two pax stranded at the MAA airport, including a colleague of mine). Net result, was that we arrived in BLR, almost 25 minutes early at the point of touchdown, and doors opened about 22 minutes before ETA! Here's proof

I'm beginning to think that Jet has set higher standards, and is now competing with Stephen Hawking in the time travel space, rather than with airlines... (and while you're at it, if Hawking interests you, then read this).

I was in BLR on a whirlwind trip, for just the evening, (meeting and dinner at the ITC Windsor), and it was my first time at that property. Will post on that soon, though I wish I'd stayed there longer.