Avis du vol entre Mumbai et Kolkata en classe Premium Eco avec Air India

Flights back from Mumbai to Kolkata were extremely expensive compared to the normal price. Luckily, there were a few Air India flights with premium economy seats available for booking with vouchers that I had, and this one was the best time: not getting in too late, but also leaving late enough that there was plenty of time in Mumbai that day. It was booked using a premium economy voucher.
This was the last flight of the trip, before, unfortunately, months of no further travel.

As this was an AI2 flight number, it was meant to be an ex-Vistara aircraft and indeed it was on most days. A couple of days earlier, Flightradar showed that a Vistara plane had been assigned for today's flight, but when I checked again a few hours later it had been changed to an Air India plane. While this was disappointing, at least it would let me experience the new Air India A320 cabin.
Welcome to Mumbai Airport. As in all Indian airports, there was a document check to get in, but luckily there was no line there.

There was also no line at check-in. Domestic premium economy, business and first (there is first on some Delhi-Mumbai flights) check-ins were in the same area with economy further down.

There were lots of workers who were helping with things like lifting the bags, which was quite nice if a bit unusual. I'm not sure if it was just a thing for the non-economy cabins.
Security didn't have much of a line either, but a lot of the belt's side was cordoned off so there was only enough space for two people. This meant it took a while for everyone to put their bags on the belt and caused things to be unnecessarily slow.
After security there was a boarding pass scan and then a bit of a walk to the gate.
There were some nice displays along the route, but for some reason many were partially blocked. Even in arrivals these displays can't be fully seen.

Others were not.

I got to the gate just in time to watch our plane coming in from Delhi.

This one is VT-EXP, an A320neo that's a bit under 7 years old. In March 2025 it was repainted and reconfigured to include premium economy as part of Air India's ongoing fleet refurbishment.

As on the last flight, the scheduled inbound arrival was after the scheduled boarding time, so, unsurprisingly, boarding had yet to start.

There were separate boarding lanes set up.

Gate seating was quite full, probably because there was also an IndiGo flight going from gate B.
While you can't see it that well, that plane is a Kenya Airways 737-800 coming in from Nairobi-Jomo Kenyatta. I flew them Mumbai-Nairobi in 2019.

The crew only arrived half an hour after when boarding was meant to begin, and it did start just a few minutes after that.
The two economy lines had been combined into one, and the business and premium economy ones were also merged together. But they both started boarding at the same time, with premium economy/business passengers able to sort of cut ahead through the dedicated line. Another problem was that the jetbridge wasn't open yet, so there was a big unmoving line backed up all the way to the gate area for about five minutes.

Eventually actual boarding of the plane started.

Excellent view from the jetbridge.

Welcome on board. The seats were quite similar to economy…
This was premium economy:

And this, one row behind me, was economy.

The seatback was probably quite similar too.

There were USB-A and -C charging ports at each seat.

As well as device holders.

And personal air vents and lights.

There were also coathooks which I didn't photograph.
Headrest was fully adjustable.
(That curtain marked the beginning of economy).

The hard product was probably a bit better than Vistara if I'm being honest.
While other seats seemed to also have a sickness bag and an immigration information card from the Ministry of Home Affairs, mine just had the safety card and magazine. Boarding was a bit slow so I looked through the magazine while waiting and there were actually quite a few interesting articles in there.

There was an automated announcement in Bengali which was quite rare, I only remember hearing that on Singapore Airlines before. It was only used during boarding and before landing and not throughout the flight.
Menus were handed out on the ground. While I had a special meal pre-ordered, it was still a nice touch.

Another welcome addition to the service were the very refreshing towels, though the effect was slightly ruined by the flight attendent saying "do you need towels?" rather than just giving them or saying "would you like towels." It was an extremely minor issue but just made it feel like there was a bit of pressure to not ask for it.

I happened to see the ex-Vistara plane in the Tata SIA special livery going by.

We pushed back twenty minutes late but were in the air before too long.

For some reason there was no entertainment information card on this flight, so I had to go back to my pictures from the CCU-BOM flight to find the link for the entertainment.

 A decent selection, it looked a bit different from the other flight but unfortunately unlike last time, on this flight it was incredibly slow and I couldn't browse much to make a better comparison. It took an extremely long time to load (in fact some of these pictures and my attempts at watching are from after the meal because it didn't load before). Movies kept buffering, literally every few seconds. I turned on subtitles which was a mistake as that made it stop working for more than five minutes, after it started again it was still only a few seconds at a time.
I wanted to make it work but I had to give up after getting through only about three minutes of the movie in more than twenty minutes. Effectively didn't work.
Not too long after takeoff, service began. This is my special meal.

Interestingly, the knife had the old Air India logo while the fork and spoon had the new one.

The meal was pretty good overall. The appetiser was great, the main was good, the dessert was ok.
Drinks came by after the meals and I got apple juice.

I'd noticed that the menu mentioned a vegetarian "citrony pastry" which sounded pretty good, so I asked the lady doing the service if there were any extras and she was happy to give me one. While she'd started off not extraordinarily hospitable she got steadily more friendly during the flight and was nice and helpful overall.

There was some kind of custard around the pastry which was a little strange but it did taste delicious.
Warm beverages and water were served after the meal.

The person in the aisle seat got up to go the lavatory so I took the opportunity to go as well. The economy ones were occupied so I went to the business ones, which is what the crew on the last flight had told me to do in the same situation. There was already someone waiting there and a crew member told me she could call me when it was free and asked for my seat number. The lady who had been serving premium economy remembered my seat number and told her before I did 😅
I was called in a few minutes but then the captain suddenly went in and then someone else did too, so I was waiting awkwardly at the back of the small business cabin.

Finally I was able to go in.
The premium economy, like business, was all dark by this time.

Economy, on the other hand, was very much not.

I was getting a bit thirsty so I used the call button to ask for a Sprite, a crew member (not the one who had been doing the main service) came and got it quite fast, though she seemed a bit annoyed about it.

The cabin became hot a little while before landing.
There wasn't much of a view from the air, and only a few IndiGo planes on the ground.

Brief view of the cabin on the way out, including a couple of windows which seemed to need repairs.

There was no bye or anything from the crew, who were talking amongst themselves.
I learned that premium economy bags also get a priority tag with Air India and mine arrived before almost everyone else's, so not much of a wait at all.

A bit of a view of the baggage claim hall.

And that concludes this entire trip and likely my travel for a while. Thanks for reading.