The ‘Duronto’ Flight

This is the first-hand account of my first ever international flight. Though my journey took me to Roanoke, more interesting is the experience onboard the 17 hour trans-continental “Duronto” (non-stop) flight- Delta 185 from Mumbai, India to Atlanta, USA.

~~~~~

Warning: The narration is extremely long. Not recommended for the impatient.

~~~~~

The journey began at Terminal 2, Gate D of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai. The day I took the flight (3rd Aug 2009), there were no less than 50 students booked onboard, and so, another 500 relatives and friends to see them off. At 08:45pm, bidding adieu to the city I grew up in, I entered for my Check-in. The security woman asked me to remove the “belan” from my carry-on baggage and put it in the check-in baggage as they thought it was a “potential security threat” and then at the check in counter, I was asked to give my carry-on bag in check-in too since it was “too big to fit in the cabin”! Duh! What was the need to ask me to open all locks and transfer the poor “belan” from one bag to another if all of them were going in checked baggage! Anyways, happy to see all my 3 bags gone in check-in, I returned to the Waiting Area and spent almost an hour with family and friends. At 10:00pm, I proceeded for Immigration and the process was over in under 2 minutes. Next step- Security. As expected, the police constable there asked me to open my laptop bag (which had everything except a laptop), remove shoes and pretended to frisk me thoroughly. What he did not notice (or object to) was that I had my digital camera with batteries intact and cellphone on (rules do not allow either). While frisking, he asked me why I was going to US and on hearing my reply mumbled, “Yeh sab log MS..MS kehte rehte hai, pata nahi vahaan karne kya jaate hai!“

The escalator from Security leads to the swanky Duty Free area and the Lounges and I was impressed by the look of the entire area. Kudos, MIAL! It was 11:15pm by now and since my flight was re-scheduled for 01:15am, my Boarding would not begin before 12:30am by any chance. So, I waited around and slowly all the fellow Virginia-Tech students from Mumbai and my fellow VJTI buddies going to various universities joined in. The lounge around Gate 15 resembled a college canteen with students all over the place! In true Indian style, around 12am, one by one all DL-185 passengers (mostly students) started gathering near Gate 15 and formed a long queue, inspite of the LCD screen not showing “Boarding Now” sign! Finally a Delta official had to request everyone over the PAS to settle down!

At 12:45am, it was announced that passengers flying by Jet Airways flight to Heathrow can now board from Gate 15! This confused all of us. Eventually they were shifted to Gate 16 and without any announcements, Delta started Boarding for DL-185 from Gate 15! At 01:25am, the aerobridge was opened and after another round of bag-checking, I was finally inside the Boeing 777-200 LR, the aircraft holding the World Record of having flown 21,500km non-stop once, giving it the capability to travel between virtually ANY two cities in the world without a break!

When I entered almost the entire plane was full and all the overhead luggage racks were full. Though my seat was 46J, a right side window seat, I found place to keep my bag over 50F (4 rows behind me). The other two passengers sitting next to me were a Bengali lady and her teenager son and I had a hard time trying to enter my window seat using the tiny legroom in front of them. The air-hostesses looked as if they were out from an Old Age Home, almost the age of my grandma! I felt bad to see Delta making these old ladies work so hard!

After the mandatory security announcements in English and heavily accented Hindi, the two huge jet engines came to life at 01:55am with a loud sound and we slowly reversed out into the taxiway. Thankfully we were not made to wait and we slowly reached the end of Runway 09-27 and at took off at 02:05am IST taking a very steep ascent route, crossing the Western Express Highway at close to 200 feet height, SV Road even higher, Juhu Beach was crossed in seconds and then it was straight into rain clouds!

The touch-screen in front of my seat had a Moving Map options which traced the real-time flight path onto Google Earth type of satellite image. After take-off we headed straight west over Arabian Sea and eventually made a huge semi-circle avoiding Gujarat continuously and entered Pakistan just west ok Karachi at 03:26am IST. By now everyone, including me, was damn hungry and looking all around the plane to see if any food was being served. At 03:30am IST, dinner was served and the vegetarian option consisted of one small stuffed paratha divided neatly into two, raita, ice-cold salad of “chhole” beans, little rice, little dal, little aloo-bhindi subzee and three tiny papad alongwith a glass of apple juice.

Just as dinner was complete, at 03:50am IST, we hit turbulence for the first time. The plane started shaking as if it was suffering from high fever! I was inside the Washroom when this happened and a warning flashed inside “Return to seat now!” I wonder how! I mean, when you are in the washroom, how can you leave the “job” midway and return to your seat? Within few minutes, at 03:58am, we entered Iran. After this I tried sleeping for some time but inspite of having a soft pillow and a comfortable blanket, I just couldn’t, thanks to the cramped legroom that all airplanes have. I took rest for a couple of hours and at 06:15am IST, when I opened the window, a thin line of gold and orange was seen over the horizon. It was daybreak! We were over Caspian Sea that time. At 06:35am, we entered Russia and continued to fly north-west for long time. In a couple of hours almost all the students were up and awake and started roaming around the length of the plane. At 08:48am, we entered Latvia (yes, there is such a country!) from east and at 09:05am IST, entered the Baltic Sea which appeared as a huge blue carpet under a thin layer of clouds. I now moved out from my seat, walked the length of the aircraft, went upto the kitchen right at the back, picked up some Dairy Milk chocolates and a pathetic tasting coffee. I was joined by Srikrishna, Chayanika and Kunal and we were chatting away right in the middle of the Galley till the air-hostess shooed us away! The entire Economy Class cabin had only four toilets and understandably, the queue to use each of them was huge by now! At 09:45am, we entered Sweden and I was waiting patiently outside the toilet next to Emergency Exit with more people ahead and behind me, reminding me of the queue at public toilets in Dharavi! The person who entered the toilet at 09:45am came out only at 10:15am and by this time we were already over North Atlantic Ocean. I felt like telling him- “Dude, you were shitting over one entire country!”

When I entered the washroom, again we hit turbulence and once again the “Return to Seat now” sign started flashing (which I obviously ignored!) In the meantime breakfast was served and I got mine only when I returned to my seat. There was one veg roll with some crap tasting masala filled in it, one Cup Cake, a banana and a bottle of LMN Lemon Juice. At 11:56am, we entered the Strait of Denmark and the Information Screen was showing statistics which would scare out first-timers- Altitude: 34,002 feet. Speed: 967km/hr, Outside Air Temperature: -57 C, Tail Wind: 172km/hr! By now the sun was very bright and the air-hostess asked everyone to close the windows, apparently because some people were having problems in seeing their movies properly! Yet, me and Chayanika (sitting three rows behind me) kept on opening our windows every few minutes to peep out, getting irritated looks from the air-hostess! At 12:12pm IST, we entered Greenland and from between clouds, we could see sheets of ice spread all over the place. After an hour at 1:28pm IST, we exited Greenland. All this time I was forced to keep windows shut so I tried seeing all sorts of movies from Dostana to Golmaal Returns to Matrix to Madagascar but did not see any for more than 30 minutes, eventually changing over to Live Moving Map every time!

At 2:36pm, we entered Canada from the north at an altitude of 36,001 feet and the outside temperature was -59 C, the lowest I saw during the 17 hours. The Galley area had a tray full of snacks which included Haldiram’s namkeen, baked peanuts, Dairy Milk chocolates and Cookie-Man chocolate cookies out of which the last one got over within no time! After I played a game of Su-doku on the touchscreen, the system just hung up and never re-started till the end. This gave me a good excuse to open my window and start looking out! Finally at 5:10pm IST, we entered USA over Lake Eric. By now almost everyone was bored of watching movies and so many passengers opened their windows that the air-hostess gave up asking everyone to close them. Around 5:20pm IST, we were served the last meal of the trip consisting of steaming hot Upma, a small Masala Dosa, sambar and dahi alongwith a crossiant bread, butter, jam and orange juice. In additioa to this, we had an option of one drink. I chose Cranberry Juice but some students traveling without their parents for the first time took advantage of the liberty and asked for Carlsberg Beer!

At 6:12pm IST, the captain announced that we were beginning our final descent towards Atlanta and the “Seat Belt” sign turning on meant the end of on-board service. All over Atlanta, there were thick white clouds at very low altitude and by the time we crossed them and came below, we were within touching distance of the ground. This denied me the opportunity to see much of Atlanta. I could just see one 12-lane Expressway, one railway track with a freight train on it and before we knew it, we were into airport premises. Hartsfield-Jackson being the huge airport that it is, has four parallel runways that can be used simultaneously and while we were landing on the right-most runway, there was a parallel landing on the adjacent runway, making one amazing sight to see! We touched down at 09:12am Local Time and were made to wait for some 10 minutes for four take-offs to take place from the adjacent runway before we could cross it and enter the Concourse building. After Aerobridge was attached, it took almost 15 minutes for all the passengers to alight. I was under the impression that Atlanta being such a huge and busy airport, it would be crowded and chaotic but it was totally the opposite.

As we walked towards Passport Checking, it seemed as if ours was the only plane that had arrived in the city in hours! There were no other passengers in one entire portion of the terminal demarcated for our flight. At the counter a stern looking African-American officer (like the typical cop we see in Hollywood movies) checked my I-20, asked if I was carrying any food (which I denied), attached the I-94 form to my Visa page on the passport and directed me to Baggage Claims area. The entire process took just ten minutes.

At the Baggage Claim area, there were two carousels where bags from our flight were arriving and it was quite a pain to keep a lookout on both simultaneously. I found one of the big bags on one carousel and two minutes later, another ones on another carousel. Contrary to what we were told, trolleys were FREE at Atlanta so I just loaded all of it into one and took it for Check-In for connecting flight. Since my bags already had ROA as the destination, nothing was asked and the bags were dropped onto a conveyer randomly and we were just praying that they go to the right flight! At the Security Check, we were asked to remove shoes, mobile phone, digital camera, wallet, belt, loose coins (basically every metal) and put it all on X-ray machine. Even the passport was made to go through X-ray, I don’t know why! The entire process was over in ten minutes and relaxed on completing all formalities, we started our usual passtime- photography! First we asked a cop to take our group picture and then as we were proceeding to our terminal for the next flight, we took some more. Hartsfield-Jackson has six Concourses (terminals) and the airport is spread over such a huge area that there is a dedicated underground metro line serving just the airport. Our connecting flight was from Concourse D which was walking distance away and the Airport Metro did not go there. Yet, we decided to take a joyride in it upto the last Concourse!

The Concourse D was a crowded, somewhat cramped terminal with so little sitting space that people were sitting on the floors. I think the Mumbai airport was much better and well-equipped than this. Our flight was scheduled from Gate 27 and the Gate area for the small domestic flights look more like ST depot with one officer standing outside each Gate announcing when the plane would arrive and depart. We were told that our plane was going to arrive a little later than expected “due to heavy traffic” (this happens only in USA!) and so our departure would also be late. I found a payphone to call India but did not have any Quarters to put in it. Thankfully the staff at Starbucks Coffee gave us change (without insisting that we buy comething) and I called up home, costing $1 for a 2 minute call. That was my first dollar spent in USA! There were quite a few US Marines (soldiers) at the Terminal and we even took a few photos with one of them to kill time. Finally at 12:15pm, we were told that our plane has arrived and we can start boarding. We entered the Gate and the aerobridge, instead of taking us to the plane, deposite us on the tarmac and we had to walk down to the little 48-seater plane. The plane was so tiny that at first I thought we were entering some cave (like at Vaishnodevi!). It had a tiny cockpit for 2 pilots, 1 air hostess and 2-by-2 seating, but the seats were comfortable. We had heard that no refreshments are served on these small flights and hence asked the airhostess if we could get water, and she agreed to get some. Meanwhile the pilot announced- “We are a little late in departing but I will try to cover up as much as I can during the flight” (as if he was going to drive an ST bus on a rural highway!).

At 12:45pm, we started moving and slowly went upto the third runway. On the runway, as we were speeding up to take off, another plane just landed on yet another parallel runway (the fourth one!). In the meantime the two runways on other side were continously having simultaneous take-offs and landings. That’s how busy ATL airport is!

Immediately after takeoff we again crossed the layer of low clouds and above it was absolutely clear and sunny. Our route required us to take a complete 180 degree turn out of Atlanta but now nothing could be seen except the clouds. Around 15 minutes into the flight, the airhostess served a glass of Coke and 2 cookies (biscuits) for refreshments. BY the time we were done with it, the captain announced that we were begining our final descent into Roanoke. The weather was absolutely clear and I could see the beautiful Virginia countryside and the city of Roanoke spread all around us. The rate at which we were descending, I thought the runway would be right in front but then I spotted an airport with two runways to my left- at 90 degrees to our flight path! For once I thought it might be some other airport but then our pilot, as if playing a computer game, took a sharp 90 degree turn, with the aircraft inclined at 45 degrees to horizontal and brought it in line with the runway! With a small bump and jerk we landed at the Roanoke Regional Airport. The airport building is very tiny, almost like some small town railway station in India. There are no terminals- one just has to walk up from the tarmac, cross one metal detector and that’s it! The baggage carousels are right near the exit. Here, there was a $3 fee for using the trolleys, but being true Indians that we all are, we decided not to spend that money since the bags would come right at the exit and the bus stop for our bus to Blacksburg was just outside! The luggage came pretty soon and since we were 9 of us going to Virginia Tech, we took turns and dragged all the baggage to the bus stop, eventually saving many a precious dollars! With this ended my 24 hour air journey from Mumbai to Roanoke!