Review of SriLankan Airlines flight from Colombo to Bangalore in Economy

As much as Colombo’s humble, old Bandaranaike Airport desperately needs a renovation, what it does provide — from boutiques to impressive runway views — occasionally beats even multi-billion-dollar aviation paradises. This despite all prices being in expensive US dollars! How, you ask? We’ll find out below.

CMB Airport: Fusty but functional — broken inside, beautiful outside

If you’ve ever travelled through a non-Indian South Asian airport, you’ll know what I’m speaking of. It seems my country, being the biggest in this region, is also the only one with the financial capacity and budget to build glamorous terminals — as Bengaluru’s globally acclaimed T2, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is proof of. A common thread running through all of Kathmandu (KTM), Dhaka (DAC), Colombo (CMB) and Malé (MLE) is the following: they are extremely low-ceilinged and outdated; they were built decades ago and have never been expanded since; they are almost always the only international gateway to their countries.* (I’m excluding Bhutan from this comparison, because no international airlines fly there, even though its Paro (PBH) airport is also the only airway into the Himalayan monarchy.) However, the national airlines of both Nepal and the Maldives have fewer than 5 jet aircraft each, and even though Biman Bangladesh Airlines has a somewhat larger 21-strong fleet — including six modern 787s (four -8s and two -9s) — it isn’t exactly appealing to the general foreign traveller, particularly the Westerner.

In contrast, SriLankan Airlines is a proud member of the Oneworld group, its smallest full member (not counting Fiji Airways) at that, and manages to stretch its wings to London, Tokyo and Sydney — Oneworld hubs all — with its small A330 fleet. As clear from its brand image, its core USP is friendly, warm smiles, authentic heritage and delightful cuisine — something that remains remarkably consistent across its tiny-yet-diverse fleet, with guaranteed seatback IFE. Which is all the more reason that Bandaranaike Airport to the north of Colombo should really have had a major expansion, in order to greatly benefit this tropical-island paradise, but still hasn’t. Construction for a new Terminal 2 had been repeatedly stalled, and even though it’s resumed lately, there’s no word on when it will come up — unlike the new airports serving India’s two biggest cities, Noida International Airport (code: DXN) outside Delhi and Navi Mumbai International Airport (code as yet unassigned), which are set to open their doors at the end of 2024. What a sharp contrast between the budgets and resources of India and other South Asian countries!

*Okay, that’s not technically true: Bangladesh has plenty of international service from Chittagong (CGP) and Sylhet (ZYL) — including to that most important destination for Bangladeshis, London. Meanwhile Gan Island (GAN) in the Maldives has service from SriLankan Airlines itself. However, even though Nepal recently opened the Bhairahawa (BWA) and Pokhara (PKR) international airports, only the former managed to receive sporadic international service — which did not last — and so KTM once again accounts for 100% (up from 99%) of international traffic to the Himalayan ex-monarchy. As for Sri Lanka, unless you’re flying on Alliance Air (now the only Indian government-owned airline) from Chennai to Jaffna (JAF) on the northern tip, you’re almost certainly going to be travelling via CMB.

Much-needed fleet expansions for SriLankan — even if only three aircraft

In the previous instalment, on an A330-300 from Singapore (with a nose camera!), I’ve already established just how lovely and hospitable the SriLankan Airlines brand image and product is. For such a small 21-strong fleet, there is remarkable diversity: its narrowbody fleet consists of five A320ceos (4R-ABL–ABO and 4R-MRE), two A320neos (4R-ANA/ANB), four A321neos (4R-ANC–ANF) and, most recently, an all-white sharkletted A320ceo, 4R-ABS. This was delivered new to Royal Brunei Airlines in 2015 as V8-RBW, and moved to SriLankan in December 2023, with no colours whatsoever on the body — much like my A321, 4R-ABQ, below. (Royal Brunei — another charming little airline, with pitch-perfect typography that eludes SriLankan — has an even tinier fleet of 13: a sharkletted A320ceo, V8-RBX, identical to that one (which will also join SriLankan in due course, most likely as 4R-ABT); seven A320neos, V8-RBA–RBG; and five 787-8s, V8-DLA–DLE. In mid-February 2024, a week ago from publishing this report, it also ordered four 787-9s!)

Note: The aircraft you’ll see featured below — 4R-ABQ, the only A321ceo in the airline’s fleet (4R-ABR was retired in 2020) — was withdrawn from service on 15 January 2024, along with 4R-ALC, a 1999-built A330-200, which means the airline’s fleet has shrunk to 21 from the previous 23. The Lanka Aviator forum tabulates the airline’s small but significant fleet excellently, along with all airlines at Colombo and the entire flight schedule. (Link here.)

Its widebody fleet has also received a much-needed — if small and short-term — expansion: to add to its seven A330-300s (4R-ALL–ALR, with 4R-ALO being the one I flew connecting to this flight) and two A330-200s (4R-ALH in the Oneworld livery and 4R-ALS, with 4R-ALA/ALB/ALC leaving the fleet) it has now taken lease of two more A330-200s, OE-LAC and OE-LCL, from charter carrier Air Belgium. These A330-200s — delivered new in 2014 to Etihad Airways as A6-EYT and A6-EYU respectively, and withdrawn from service within five years — shifted to Air Belgium in late 2022, with Austrian OE- registrations instead of Belgian OO- ones. (I’m shocked that these did not receive Maltese 9H- registrations, since that’s what every new leased/chartered aircraft in Europe seems to do nowadays!) Having been crippled by its limited fleet for all these years — all the more so due to the Sri Lankan political protests in 2022, where the populace stormed the presidential palace — these planes will provide a much-needed boost to this beautiful little airline and its lovely product.

And so, below, I’ll talk more about how, despite the inconsistency in its miniscule fleet, the warmth, hospitality and friendliness that SriLankan Airlines manages to pull off so wonderfully — not to mention seatback IFE, which is a rarity on almost all other narrowbodies in South Asia (bar the über-luxe Vistara A321neo, as I flew from Singapore to Mumbai) — is so remarkably consistent that I can’t wait to fly them again, ideally on a nose-camera-equipped A330-300 during daylight. Even on this almost entirely colourless, somewhat older A321 — which left the fleet not long after — the product and crew were such a delight that even this short redeye at terrible times was nothing short of enjoyable. Despite all these restrictions in terms of fleet, finances and home hub — as the airline’s CEO, Richard Nuttall, so patiently explained in a recent interview — I simply cannot recommend flying with them enough. As I also said last time, UL is an Unbelievably Lovely airline!

Same old CMB — same old loveliness!

Thursday, 9 November, continued. Shortly after arriving from my A330-300 flight from Singapore — all my bags had been checked in all the way to Bengaluru, so I wouldn’t have to bother about that — I headed towards the SriLankan Airlines transfer counters just for the heck of it.

My word, I was very much taken aback (pleasantly) by the way, even at an ancient low-ceilinged airport, that UL had taken to decorate the counters with its aspirational brand and all-smiling flight attendants. This airline will never cease to wow me!

The lovely, heartfelt greetings ranged from Ayubowan, may you live long. to You’re never to young to make friends at 30,000 feet. to Discover a nation of warmth. ‘Oh what a lovely little airline this is, even at this ancient airport!’ was the prevailing sentiment in my mind.

Evidently, UL’s USP and biggest advantage is the straight-from-the-heart hospitality and delightful nature of its cabin crew, cuisine and services — and that’s an important thing to be proud of, since neither its home airport nor its small fleet can be trumpeted about!

Another such boutique airline, Oman Air, will also become part of the Oneworld family in the second half of 2024 — but it’s discontinuing Colombo service from 31 March, which means it won’t be cooperating at all with SriLankan, since UL doesn’t fly to Muscat. Nevertheless, I bet Oman Air has picked the best alliance for this purpose, which despite the atrocious blue logo stands head and shoulders above the other two when it comes to brand consistency. (A big reason being the complete absence of Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean airlines, which tend to have uniformly terrible advertising and brand strategies!)

Another nice thing about Banadaranaike, besides the home airline’s overall loveliness — despite the otherwise gloomy old ambience — was the clear views of the apron, something that’s very often hard to get at much bigger, fancier airports. My previous A330-300, 4R-ALO, stood side by side with a fellow A320neo, either 4R-ANA or ANB.

I decided to check out the retail outlets, which I knew going in were rather limited in nature. My previous layover in April was so short that I simply stepped off the plane from Chennai, went through the at-gate security screening and hopped back on the same plane to Singapore — so much so that I didn’t even have the time to stray beyond the gate, which was just as well as CMB isn’t about to score brownie points in this department.

The shops themselves often celebrated the island country’s heritage of craftsmanship, cuisine and culture, like these coffee, jewellery and ayurveda shops below. On the TVs played the highlights reel of a match from the ongoing ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup in India, a tournament where Sri Lanka’s team was having a torrid time.

An ever-so-slightly more glamorous retail selection at an old airport

Proceeding further down the corridors was a very brightly lit, almost Changi-like, eatery called Fashion Café. I was momentarily tempted by the wide array of confections and concoctions on offer — and then it hit me: all prices at this airport were not in LKR, but USD! In other words, quite expensive — in contrast to all other airports I’ve seen, where prices are always in the local currency, be it INR, SGD, THB or IDR, as the case may be. (However, a Popeyes at Hanoi’s Noibai airport had prices in USD as well — as I saw after concluding a week-long trip to Vietnam, just before my first flight of 2024.)

Outside, an LG-sponsored screen was playing touristy videos of Westerners lounging on the silky sands of Sri Lanka’s beaches, interspersed with generic ads for banks and shopping centres, which I’ve omitted.

Right outside Fashion Café stood SriLankan’s Serendib Lounge, the better (read: more elite) of its two lounges at CMB, alongside the Serenediva Lounge. Further down was a Flemingo Duty Free, the same company that operates duty-frees at Chennai Airport, my former Indian home airport and one that I’ve ragged on mercilessly in the past…

…and will continue to do so, for not even its New Integrated Terminal Building (impressive as it may be) will ever be able to camouflage the government-run shoddiness of the place, or compete with BLR’s T2 which was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and continues to rake in worldwide awards, including the Prix Versailles from UNESCO.

Nearby stood a kiosk — closed at night — for Dialog Axiata, Sri Lanka’s largest telecom company, owned by the Malaysia-headquartered multinational Axiata conglomerate. In its home country, Axiata-owned Celcom joined forces with Digi — the local branch of Telenor, the Norwegian group operating across the Nordics and South(east) Asia — to create CelcomDigi in 2022–23, in order to take on the perennial market leader Maxis.

Such telecom mergers have occurred all over Asia, from Vodafone Idea (branded as Vi) in India — a highly loss-making one, losing tens of millions of subscribers and rupees, and utterly unable to keep up with the might of Jio (owned by the Ambani family’s multi-billion-dollar Reliance Industries) — to Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison in Indonesia, to True/dtac in Thailand, to Hutch and Etisalat right here in Sri Lanka.

Some more large and small shops dotted the place, both traditional (like the Spa Ceylon boutique below) and modern, like Burger King — which still sported the older, pre-2021 logo — and also Segafredo Caffè. At least there was something by way of retail options, unlike Chennai, but those that were there weren’t particularly appealing or budget-friendly — a shame for Sri Lanka’s (almost always) only international airport.

It goes without saying that CMB is very far from being a favourite of mine — unlike the other transit-only airports which I visited in 2023: Mumbai T2 (so awesome, I was there twice in 2023 and will be again in February 2024); Jakarta T3 (highly impressive and even grand before Immigration, but disappointing at the gates); and, at the fag end of the year, Hong Kong (ABSOLUTELY MAGNIFICENT all around, from the breathtaking views to the variety of near-and-far airlines — and, (literally) above all, the SKY DECK!!!). But the very prospect of flying SriLankan Airlines, and all the delight that comes with it, more than makes up for this very ancient, very depressing little airport.

For what it’s worth, the Spa Ceylon store had a number of apparently tailored, customised solutions — like a magician’s potions — for hair, skin and body alike. At least some shops invest a little towards branding and upkeep, even if the airport as a whole can’t afford to do so!

A late-night drink above the departure floor…

A Malindo Air Batik Air Malaysia 737-800 (9M-LNV) had joined the apron as OD297 from Kuala Lumpur, another Oneworld airline’s home and an airport that — despite being nowhere near the city — is one that I have an emotional bond with, not least because it was the first foreign airport I ever visited in 2013. Not to mention, while not as extravagant and award-winning as my home airport of Changi, it’s perfectly well-designed and opulent, with 24-hour free Wi-Fi! (Proof: one, two, three, four.)

Two SriLankan A330-300s were in action: 4R-ALN was landing from Malé (always a good destination for a widebody, even if on a one-hour hop) as UL104, while 4R-ALL had only just landed from Melbourne as UL605. The foreign aircraft on the ground included an AirAsia Malaysia A320 and an Emirates 777-300ER, besides a Royal Air Force (UK) Airbus A400M that had landed from Al Minhad Air Base (code: NHD) south of Dubai.

At eleven-ish, I headed to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which I hadn’t expected to be present in Sri Lanka in the first place. The (stale) cakes and muffins were terribly overpriced at US$8–9 apiece, so I had this juice instead — the sweet-and-sour orangey ’Narang’ flavour — which set me back by US$4.

The CBTL store was situated on the other side of the atrium (above the remote departure gates) from the aforementioned Flemingo duty-free shop, one of whose salespersons was very visibly pregnant! (No, she’s not visible here — I’d seen to that.) My round-mouthed caption went: ‘My word, one of the duty-free women looks like she’s going to give birth tomorrow!’

This was also the case for a domestic Hanoi–Ho Chi Minh City flight on a VietJetAir A320 (should have been an A330-300, but…) at the end of 2023, where the young woman at the counter of a Vietnamese souvenir shop — from which I bought dried, candied fruits as gifts — processed my purchases with nimble hands, with which she caressed her round stomach from time to time while chatting incessantly with her colleague.

My own aircraft, the colourless 4R-ABQ, was all set to land from Hyderabad — a major South Indian city, where I’d started 2023 — as UL176, barely a couple of hours before taking me to the nearby Bengaluru on UL173. (Don’t be fooled by that picture of ‘Albuquerque’ — you can understand why from that registration — as that’s an old photo, and her colours were all removed thereafter.)

I also wanted to check a couple of other departures at Sri Lanka’s other airports: Jaffna (JAF) on the northern tip has a solitary flight to Chennai on the Indian state-owned Alliance Air’s ATR 72, while Trincomalee (TRR) in the east has a daily seaplane service to Bandaranaike — though many other domestic seaplane flights use Colombo’s second Ratmalana (RML) airport. Meanwhile, Singapore Airlines’ daily SQ469 service on the 787-10 had departed from CMB, while two other Oneworld members’ widebodies (apart from SriLankan, that is) were nearing Bengaluru: CX623 from Hong Kong — I’d take the very same airline in the return direction a day before the above VietJetAir flight — and JL753 from Tokyo Narita.

Meanwhile I busied myself with an article from Runway Girl Network on ‘why SriLankan has the best economy class you (probably) aren’t flying’, an excellent one at that — one that captures how much of a joy flying this airline (particularly on the A330-300, as on the previous leg) is — which I’ve reproduced in its entirety below.

Another roundup of the aircraft going to and from Colombo as I sipped on my narang juice: there were some very exotic departures, like an Air Seychelles A320neo, and two Gulf giants with very similar flight numbers — EK653 and QR655 — and at very similar times. (A bit like Jakarta, where no fewer than four airlines — SQ, EK, QR and TK — have flight numbers ending with 56!)

The country’s only private commercial airline, the low-cost carrier FitsAir (code 8D), has Chennai, Dubai and Malé as its only destinations, and serves them with its fleet of three A320s: 4R-EXQ, EXR and EXS, of which only 4R-EXR is painted in the full livery.

This was also my first time seeing the new Air India logo on Flightradar24, and, I must say, it was simply striking! (Can you spot Edelweiss Air, the leisure subsidiary of Swiss International Air Lines?)

I focused a little more on S7-PTI (named Pti Merl Dezil), one of only two A320neos — and jet aircraft — at Air Seychelles, and the only one actually serving commercial flights for the airline, since S7-VEV (Veuve), the only other A320neo, mostly seems to fly cargo flights to and from Dubai World City (DWC) for the Middle East. Of the airline’s Colombo services, HM264/265 is operated only a couple of times per month, while HM262/263 is more frequent. Its other destinations include Port-Louis, Mauritius; Johannesburg, South Africa; Mumbai, India; and — as far as non-scheduled (most probably cargo) sectors are concerned — shuttles from DWC to Doha and Kuwait.

What a far cry from the days when HM operated two leased A330-200s (S7-ADB Aldabra and S7-VDM Vallée de Mai) back in the lose-billions-fast scheme that was called Etihad Airways Partners. Built in 2006–7 and originallly delivered to the erstwhile Indian full-service carrier Jet Airways — which was rumoured to make a comeback under the Jalan Kalrock Consortium, but that sure as heck isn’t happening — as VT-JWD and VT-JWE respectively, they exited Air Seychelles in 2018 and moved to another tropical-island airline, Fiji Airways, as DQ-FJO and DQ-FJP. Since 2023 they have been with Air Mauritius — another airline from a Francophone island republic in the Indian Ocean, like Air Seychelles itself — as 3B-NCL and 3B-NCM respectively.

Too bad Air Mauritius’ livery consists of only red — unlike Air Seychelles’ splendid colourful livery, one that accurately captures the vibrancy of the Indian Ocean — despite both countries’ flags having the same four colours: green, blue, yellow and red.

…and a midnight snack closer to gate-closing

Now it was close to midnight, and I was feeling peckish, but the quality of the restaurants — and price — certainly wasn’t the best. Briefly I checked out a couple of handicrafts boutiques, the likes of which occupy almost all the retail space at the shitty Chennai Airport’s international terminal. This one, however, wasn’t as bad — for the simple reason that it had a SriLankan model A330 placed at the entrance!

Below, I could see the passengers at the check-in counters on the lower floor as they snaked through to drop their bags.

I decided to head to the Pizza Hut near the SriLankan transfer counters — picture as posted at the beginning — and considered the calzone meal (US$10 including a US$3 drink) to be the most tasty and reasonable choice, especially the Sri Lankan chicken with cheesy kotchchi flavour.

When the meal arrived — it didn’t take long — I decided to read my first SriLankan review on my iPad, my final departure ever from my two-decade Indian home of Chennai, as if to contrast the low-ceilinged, lacking-on-food-options terminals of MAA and CMB. (Never mind that Chennai has a spanking-new international terminal: it still isn’t capable of matching up to BLR T2 in terms of upkeep, retail outlets and — yes — bookstores. And no, it wasn’t designed by a global firm like SOM or HOK either.)

But who cares when you get to have food on your plate before departure? At least the food was decently good, and was the only meal-like thing I could’ve got for US$10 or below, not to mention the handful of people at that hour of night — Cinderella hour — weren’t making for a noisy crowd in any way.

As the clock was about to strike midnight, I browsed through an article on EconomyNext, a Sri Lankan business news website, on how the country’s sole major international airport was trying to deal with congestion the best it could. (Note: Bandaranaike Airport is also often called the Katunayake airport, after the locality it is situated in.)

The day was now Friday, 10 November, and a Malaysia Airlines 737-800 (9M-MXN) had just arrived as MH179 at the home of its Oneworld partner. Plenty of other members of the alliance also have tails with white backgrounds — JAL and Finnair with ‘plane’ eurowhite bodies, BA and Royal Air Maroc with a bit more colour. Quite the contrast to Qatar Airways’ grey, Royal Jordanian’s chocolate brown, American’s silver and S7 Airlines’ lime green!

A rickety old bus to the plane

As is the norm for South Asia, late night really is peak international departure hour — except CMB doesn’t have the scores of domestic flights that Indian airports do during the day.

I headed downstairs to the remote boarding gates, numbered R1–R5. Three SriLankan flights were boarding simultaneously: UL402 to Bangkok, UL125 to Chennai and my flight, UL173 to Bengaluru.

There was a brief mishap where I didn’t know where the heck my boarding passes were, and with time quickly ticking by, I almost had to rush back to the transfer counter to get them printed afresh — no, no mobile boarding passes were issued whatsoever — before I finally found them hiding in a nondescript corner of my shoulder bag. Whew!

In all that hurry I’d forgotten that Mom and Dad were trying to reach out to me, and luckily I managed to call Mom and give that assurance that I was well on the way to board — they would have been chewing their nails out otherwise!

Meanwhile, I’m a member of the Network Thoughts Community, run by Indian aviation analyst Ameya Joshi, who is known for his articles both on his blog — networkthoughts.com — and the Indian news websites Moneycontrol and Hindustan Times. I’d commented on the Indian expansion of VietJetAir, saying that since it didn’t have the bilateral rights for the two big South Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, it had to turn to other smaller cities like Kochi or Cochin (COK) and Tiruchirappalli or Tiruchi (TRZ) — and was quite successful in that regard.

Another poster had mentioned that Sikhism’s holy city of Amritsar (ATQ) in the northern state of Punjab — which receives daily 787 service from Scoot — might also be a good candidate for VietJetAir, since there were already Malaysia Airlines and Scoot (which he’d mistakenly referred to as Malaysian!). The other possible cities I mentioned — PNQ (Pune), VTZ (Visakhapatnam), BBI (Bhubaneswar) and LKO (Lucknow) — all have a modicum of shorthaul service to the Gulf countries or Singapore, but nothing like heavyweights like BLR, MAA and HYD.

Now 4R-ALO, the A330-300 that had brought me here, was headed to fellow Oneworld hub Sydney as UL606, and 4R-ALN to Melbourne as UL604; sister-ship 4R-ALL was leaving for SkyTeam base Paris as UL563. S7-PTI, Air Seychelles’ A320neo, was preparing to head back to Mahé.

Nearby, a leased 777-300ER operating for Saudia — with that most ubiquitous of prefixes, Malta’s 9H — was operating one of innumerable shuttles between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, SkyTeam countries both. The number of aircraft flying between Jakarta/Medan/Surabaya/Palembang/Banda Aceh and Jeddah/Medina/Riyadh — Garuda, Lion Air, Batik Air, Saudia, flynas, to name a few — had absolutely blown through the roof!

I sprinted to the bus gate, where it was already Final Call, and an ancient blue-and-white bus was ready and waiting to take me to the plane. Not as picturesque a ride as KLIA’s unmatched selection of aircraft, but it would do — especially with that ringside view of 9V-SCO (on the daily SQ468 service operated by the 787-10) — and I wasn’t complaining!

As we drew up near our albino A321, a majestic sight awaited: A330-300 4R-ALN breezed just past en route to the runway before heading to Melbourne as UL604. My word, isn’t this little airline doing a lovely job with its fleet and destinations, tiny as they may be, but globe-spanning all the same!

I ascended the staircase to ‘Albuquerque’, a plane that wasn’t by any means as outdated as I was expecting from the lack of paint — only to be withdrawn from the fleet just two months later. Built in February 2008, 4R-ABQ was retired just before her Sweet Sixteen — no age to be scrapped (I bet there will be a number of takers for this A321) — but I hope there will be some good replacements in her place, and that SriLankan gets to at least 30 aircraft by 2026.

No colour on the body, you ask? Well, not quite: there was just this ‘Operated by SriLankan Airlines’ text and logo at the door. (No, no big blue Oneworld circle — thank God!)

The flight: Boarding and TOURISM VIDEO

Flight: SriLankan Airlines UL173/ALK173
Date: Friday, 10 November 2023
Route: Colombo Bandaranaike (VCBI/CMB) to Bengaluru Kempegowda (VOBL/BLR)
Aircraft: 4R-ABQ, Airbus A321 (albino livery)
Age: 15 years 9 months at the time (built: 2 February 2008, delivered: 13 February 2008 to Qatar Airways as A7-ADX, 15 February 2014 to SriLankan Airlines as 4R-ABQ; withdrawn from service: 15 January 2024)
Seat: 28F (starboard side, aisle)
Boarding: 12:45am IST/SLST
Departure: 1:11am IST/SLST
Arrival: 2:10am IST/SLST
Duration: 59 minutes

Notes:
• First flight on a non-neo, non-sharkletted A321*, and on a narrowbody of a Oneworld airline, having flown only A330s (9M-MTH, 4R-ALB twice, 4R-ALO) on MH and UL previously. The following month, I’d get an A350 (B-LRB) and A321neo (B-HPF) — highly cutting-edge, particularly the A321neo — of another Oneworld airline, Cathay Pacific, from Bengaluru via Hong Kong to Hanoi.

*Unless an Air India flight from Delhi to Chennai all the way back in 2009 is to be considered — I was then a little kid and not an avgeek!

A new sort of tourism video, without celebrities!

A Mr Dinesh and a Ms Tharuka ayubowan-ed me inside with their welcoming smiles. The business-class cabin had greige leather seats plus those pretty cushions that I immediately associate with SriLankan, while IFE screens were folded into the centre armrest — aside from the ones on the bulkhead.

Economy, for its part, had proper seatback IFE screens throughout, replete with USB ports and headphone jacks — I wouldn’t expect any less from this charming airline that extracts the very most from its little fleet.

Unlike Vistara — the other South Asian airline with an excellent inflight product (before its merger with Air India) — with its far bigger and newer A320neo fleet, none of which has seatback IFE, instead resorting to the Vistara World streaming system. (Its A321neos do, however, have a superb, glossy IFE — as I flew from Singapore to Mumbai in March 2023 — not to mention it was the world’s FIRST airline to install the Panasonic Arc moving map!)

I was most pleasantly surprised to find a different kind of tourism video being played — not the one with celebrities Jacqueline Fernandez and Kumar Sangakkara, as I’ve mentioned in past reports. Instead, this one went in-depth into the cultures, festivals and landscapes of the island country, such as this temple procession with elephants.

More pictures of this video in the Travelling Bonus section: I haven’t posted them here so as not to detract from the report.

As the video drew to a close, it showed the female cabin crew clad in their immaculate peacock-turquoise sarees, as they pressed their palms together for a smiling namaskar.

Having depicted the length and breadth of the country for a good five minutes, the video concluded with an A330-300 taking off and a pretty young woman adorning the reverse-herringbone aisles, serving delicacies.

An exploration of entertainment

The IFE system here was the same as what I saw on my two flights on the same A330-200 back in April — and, for that matter, it also features on the airline’s four A321neos. It’s a little more simplistic than the spinning cube I saw on my previous A330-300 flight, with a welcome screen in not only the three main languages of Sri Lanka – Sinhala, Tamil and English — but also Japanese and Chinese.

Before long the animated safety video with its peacocks and cute characters was played, and I don’t need to go over the details again here, as I’ve done so in previous SriLankan reviews. I will mention, though, that this one had subtitles in both Sinhala and Tamil — something that was never the case on my previous flights with UL.

We pulled out of the gate and past the maintenance hangars, while I busied myself with the Serendib Treasures duty-free magazine.

Here’s something else I didn’t see on the previous flights: an entertainment preview of the latest blockbusters and new releases! The Disney family in particular was well represented, from Marvel actioners to Pixar family movies.

However, Disney’s Encanto (2021) was two years old at this point, and I’d much rather they showed sister company Pixar’s Elemental (2023) instead.

Now I moved to the inflight map, which was quite informative, and while it was interspersed with ads, I didn’t mind those one bit.

Below, some more close-ups of the peacock from the safety video, and one of the ads (Student Special) that was being shown within the inflight map.

Departure, catering and tourism videos

At 1:11 the A321 took off over the night waters of Colombo, and, leaving behind a glittering western coastline, proceeded into the darkness.

There was little time to do very much on this short hour-long sector, but the crew swung straight into action with the drinks service; I opted for Coke.

A hot vegetarian calzone — much like on my first flight with SriLankan out of Chennai — soon appeared in my hand, and it was delicious. For a one-hour sector in South Asia, this is as good food as it can get! (But AirAsia, a budget carrier, allows you to pre-order TWO hot meals on the one-hour Kuala Lumpur–Singapore sector — as I experienced before.)

Not that it would amount to all that much on this brief hop, but I went for the IFE system’s do-not-disturb feature — ‘Would you like us to wake you for meals?’ it asked — and dozed off for the next twenty or so minutes before descent.

But not before I had a glance at the list of tourism/promotional videos lined up in the IFE, which should have been put under the ‘About us’ section, but who cares — I’m not complaining when there’s such a vast variety to choose from! From ‘Journeys that make memories‘ to ‘The Minneriya elephant gathering‘ to two videos promoting nonstop flights to Melbourne, this went a very long way in cementing SriLankan as one of my favourite airlines for product, people and personality alike.

Notice: the promotional video for the Oneworld alliance is a whopping 44 minutes long, almost the duration of this flight, and so there’s a little warning in red that says ’Not enough time to finish your video’.

I’d also like to mention that, while boarding, I had stated in passing to the flight attendants that my parents were very concerned about my whereabouts — as they always are — and had wondered whether there would be any way to contact them. Chathurika, one of the female cabin crew, reassured me that as we were close to departure, there wouldn’t be much to worry about and we would in fact reach Bengaluru well ahead of schedule today. Kudos for the effort!

BLR T2 at 2am: Still as spellbinding as ever

I opened my eyes right in time for the descent announcement, seeing the white wingtip glow above the shiny city lights below.

At 2:10am, ‘Albuquerque’ touched down for a smooth roll to the Kempegowda terminal — quite unlike the 2022 Bollywood thriller drama Runway 34, where the first officer’s surname is Albuquerque. Based on the real-life Jet Airways flight 9W555 incident in 2015, the film shows Captain Vikrant Khanna (played by Ajay Devgn) and First Officer Tanya Albuquerque (Rakul Preet Singh) having a near-death experience, literally, as they very barely manage to save their and their passengers’ lives with only split-second decisions that could make or break everyone on board!

As soon as cellular data was turned on, I was hit by a barrage of notifications from my parents, as I was very much out of CMB’s Wi-Fi coverage on the bus ride and thereafter. Outside, the A321 embarked on a long taxi to the terminal, one of the longest I’ve had at BLR.

International hour at Indian airports is always between 11 at night and 5 in the morning, and now we had the likes of a Lufthansa 747, an Emirates A380 and an Air France A330-200 among the arrivals. There was also VT-APJ, an A320 of Air India Express (formerly with AirAsia India) in the promotional livery for the 2016 film Kabali starring ‘Super Star’ Rajinikanth, perhaps the most legendary actor in Tamil cinema.

Another guest from afar was a Japan Airlines 787-8, JA837J, having arrived from Tokyo Narita on the 3x weekly JL753 service. JAL continues to serve Bengaluru and its Silicon Valley-bound techies well after COVID, unlike ANA, which was only too happy to terminate service to nearby Chennai — something that was launched in late 2019 and was hit by COVID soon after — citing weak demand on the route, as well as to Yangon and Phnom Penh.

The IFE displayed a pretty aqua-blue thank-you message as passengers scrambled to disembark, but I was in no such hurry.

As we deplaned, the more famous brand video of SriLankan Airlines — featuring Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez and veteran cricketer Kumar Sangakkara, as I’ve written about at length in the past — was screened.

There was quite a bit of haze surrounding the JAL 787, while I juxtaposed the conclusion of my afternoon UL flight to Singapore in April along with the IFE screen.

It was only around 2:40 that I stepped off the plane, thanking Chathurika for her concern, while the JAL 787 and AF A330 prepared to return to NRT and CDG respectively, all while an Etihad 787-9 (A6-BLC) had landed from Abu Dhabi as EY216. I additionally had a look at VT-ICN, one of IndiGo’s latest A321neos, and (astonishingly) one of only two in the VT-IC* series along with VT-ICO, as the other registrations have inexplicably been left blank!

From despair to splendour: BLR T2 International arrivals

IndianOil, one of the Indian state-owned energy companies, had plastered the jetbridge leading to the glamorous, award-winning terminal from both inside and outside. This was to be my first time at BLR T2’s international arrivals, having used T1’s facility before — and, so far, I haven’t yet used it again, since my next two arrivals here (Vistara from Mumbai in December 2023 and Air India Express from Delhi in February 2024) used the domestic side of T2.

On the other side was parked a lovely Lufthansa 747-8 on the daily LH754/755 service from Frankfurt, which is now complemented by the LH764/765 A350 from Munich that arrives at around the same time of night.

Proceeding through the glossy corridors, I found myself to be simply overlooking the crowds who had aggregated at that hour of night.

The arrivals (not clearly visible below; full resolution here) were from all over the place: Etihad, Qatar and Kuwait Airways, and Air Arabia from the Gulf; Lufthansa and British Airways from Europe, in addition to Air France and KLM earlier; Ethiopian from Africa; and JAL and previously Cathay Pacific — as I flew from here the following month (December) — from Northeast Asia.

Unlike the arrivals, the departures had more or less given way to domestic flights in the early-morning hours.

Much like at Mumbai, and worlds away from the drab white immigration hall in Delhi, BLR T2’s immigration counters were lined with elegant wicker-like chandeliers above with pretty artworks behind. It’s so much of a pleasure to be getting your passport stamped in such luxurious grounds — but the crowds were another matter…

Immediately after, a towering new Bengaluru Duty Free — high-ceilinged (which I have a phobia of), like the one in Departures, but swish and stylish all the same with its swirling ceiling patterns — presented itself. There were all sorts of Diwali decorations and posters, and it was far more luxurious than the one in Mumbai which looked little different from Indian department stores like Lifestyle, Shoppers Stop, Westside and Reliance Trends — swanky though they may be. (Yes, we have plenty of M&Ss and H&Ms too, should you want something more global.)

Especially, I was drawn to the ‘Sweet Garden’ with its variety of chocolates, from M&Ms to Toblerones to Lindts to KitKats. But I had to pass up on those, and instead bought a Baileys Irish Cream and a Famous Grouse for my dad — I don’t drink — which came to over ₹4,000 INR (nearly US$50) in total.

Resplendent and technicoloured: Baggage belts

I firmly think this must be the best baggage-collection area I’ve seen anywhere in India — beating even BOM T2 and its funky square numerals — and only Changi T2 outperforms it anywhere else. From the corrugated ceilings, to the variegated walls with all their display patterns, to the bells on top, to the innovative font (Geogrotesque) for the flight details as compared to most other Indian airports, DEL and BOM included, which use Arial or Segoe UI there — I’m convinced BLR has beaten all of them as far as international arrivals are concerned.

Look at the number of codeshares for the Lufthansa 747 flight! Air Canada and Scandinavian Airlines were just for starters. Etihad, on the other hand — for an airline that boasts of the maximum codeshare partners in the world — had pretty much nothing there.

With all the dazzling digital murals above, I headed out past the under-construction 080 Transit Lounge to the exit.

Really, there’s very little standing in the way of BLR becoming one of the best-designed airports in the globe, and — much more importantly — one bereft of the Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chanel, Gucci and Gassan boutiques which make Changi so exorbitantly expensive, instead having a bunch of affordable yet hyper-modern eateries and shops. (Exhibit A: the Wendy’s just outside the arrival doors, which I’d never before seen in my life, much less in India.)

I’d asked Dad to book an Uber for me in advance, so the below screenshots are from his Xiaomi phone — though I have one too, playing second fiddle to my iPhone 14 Pro. He gave me the PIN to show to the nearest driver in the Uber Zone, and it was some 3:45am when I got there.

Located just outside the arrival doors, the Ola and Uber Zones — the latter of which was celebrating 10 years in India — are where most passengers head, day and night, to be ferried home. Four in the morning (as was the case in this instance)? No problem!

Notice that in the last picture below, the trolley has the ‘Bengaluru International Airport’ logo that was introduced with the airport’s opening in 2008; only in 2013 was it renamed to Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru.

As it struck four, I whizzed past the glow and glamour of T2 followed by T1, and began the hour-long trek all the way down south to my home in the suburb of Begur near the ever-bustling Bannerghatta Road highway. Mercifully, none of the traffic woes plaguing the city’s arterial roads during the day were there at this ungodly hour.

Midway, I passed the famous Cubbon Park, in the centre of the city, and it was only at some 5:10 or so that I finally made it home — and spent the next ten or so hours dozing blissfully!

Only late at night did I fill up the UL173 leg of my journal, and it was at the fag end of an entire day spent sleeping — but very well spent, thanks to the A330-300 flight the previous evening!

Some additional pictures from the tourism video