Continental Airway's Direct Nonstop Flight from Mumbai to Newark

I had recently an opportunity to travel in a direct, non stop flight of Continental Airlines from Mumbai to Newark. I am going to cover a few aspects of said journey so that all my readers can get a good idea about this direct nonstop flight, around 16 hours long. We reached Mumbai airport before around four hours of the actual departure time and started our check in routine. We had one wheel chair passenger also in our group.

The wheel chair was provided as soon as we reach to the airline's counter. All our baggage was passed through the X-ray machine and was checked in. The boarding cards were issued immediately. One of our hand bags was taken as an unaccompanied baggage as it would have been difficult to accommodate it in a cabin as a cabin baggage. The immigration, custom clearance, and the security checks were completed smoothly. But the final security check was announced around one and a half hour before the departure time. This security check was really exhaustive as the passengers were required to remove all their electronic items out and pass through the scanning machine.

The boarding was started around fifty minutes prior to the departure time. The real chaos started at this time. The exact sequence of the boarding was not announced properly. As a result, all the passengers rushed at a time and the sick, wheel chair passengers really suffered a lot as no wheel chair was provided by the airline's staff in time. The boarding was really time consuming as there were around 400 passengers in all and the flight was full.

The flight started exactly at 23.10 hours as per the scheduled time and the drinks and dinner were served within around forty five minutes of the departure. The varieties of the drinks were many but no alcoholic drink was served free. Each alcoholic drink was served at the charge of $5 per drink. We had Asian vegetarian dinner and the dinner was reasonably good. It consisted of couple of vegetables, rice, curd, paraunthas, sweet item, and salad, with salad dressing. The chicken was served in non-vegetarian meals. The second service of the drink was not given and it also took a little more time to serve the dinner to all the passengers. The entertainment section of the flight was really good. There were around 350 movies of all types including seven Hindi Indian films, which are most popular. The computer games also were available in around forty varieties. There was a separate hand set provided to each passenger for operating the personal TV. The air hostess call button, and the individual reading light switches were provided on the seat armrest only as against on the top of the seat as in other airlines. The seats were also spacious with comfortable leg space so as to provide rest in such a long flight of around sixteen hours up to Newark.

The most vital aspect of the flight was that there was a central air conditioner only and individual passenger was not having any control on it. The temperature maintained in aircraft was also quiet low and most of the passengers were shivering with cold in spite of the blankets provided by the airlines. I would have one advice to all my friends and readers to keep some woolen item with them during this Continental airlines flight. Many passengers requested to increase the temperature but the airlines staff could not do that in view of the prescribed temperature to be maintained as per their policy. The light snack was supplied after around four hours of dinner, which consisted of the hot dog, sweet biscuit, and a drink. Finally, the complete meal was served around couple of hours prior to landing. This meal was good and tasty and consisted of Vada Sambhar, masala rice, curd, salad, prickle, and a sweet item. The immigration and custom forms were supplied after this final meal and the proper guidance was also provided on how to fill in these forms. The cleanliness standards of the toilets were also quiet good. Finally, our sixteen hours non stop direct flight came to an end and we landed at Newark at 5.30 am, exactly as per the schedule. However, there was no announcement made on the weather outside at Newark on landing and again, there was lot of mismanagement in providing the wheel chair assistance to the passengers.

Our experience of this long flight was good in general with some factors, which were really not in our favor. I would request all my AC friends and readers to make note of such factors and resolve them in advance so as to avoid inconvenience during the actual flight. If any of my readers have any further questions on this, they are free to contact me.