Air India Express is an interesting story, not because anything dramatic happened, but because the small things kept stacking up until the whole experience started to feel a bit silly. I flew Air India Express from Goa to Bombay, and on the surface it was like any other domestic flight. Honestly, airlines like Akasa have felt slightly better to me in terms of overall experience, but this trip stood out for a different reason: the way Air India Express handles basic process and systems.
It started with something that’s becoming common across airlines: seat selection. When I tried to pick a free seat, nothing was available. The push is clear—pay for a seat. And yes, if you’re travelling together, you can often just check in normally and the system usually gives you seats next to each other because that’s what they’re expected to try and do. Still, it leaves you with this feeling that “free choice” is mostly gone, and the default is to pay up.
Then came the web check-in flow, which raised my first real “why are we doing this?” moment. The system asked for my PNR and my name, email, or mobile number. Fair enough. I entered the PNR and name. Next step: it asked for my mobile number. Now, I get it if the idea is to send notifications—but you already have my number. You’ve already been messaging me. So why ask again?
And it didn’t stop there. At the airport, the staff were courteous, no complaints there. But even at the counter, they asked for my mobile number again. At this point it’s hard not to think: if your systems are connected, why does the same piece of information keep getting collected like it’s brand new? It’s not the asking that’s annoying—it’s the repetition that makes the whole thing feel messy.
On top of that, there’s the constant nudge to join “Neu Coins.” Every time, there’s a prompt. The truth is I’m on it, and I don’t use it. For me, it’s not worth the time and effort, and it feels pretty useless as a program. When a loyalty program is good, people don’t need to be chased—they naturally want to use it. When it’s not, the constant prompting just becomes background noise.
Then came the boarding pass comedy. At the gate, I showed my boarding pass and got allowed in. As I walked down, someone else stopped me, checked it again, and put a tick mark in a box. And just before entering the aircraft, another person scanned the boarding pass again. Three checks for the same thing, one after another. It felt like a joke. Either the system is strong enough to trust, or it isn’t—but making three people do the same verification doesn’t magically make it better.
After landing in Bombay, there was more waiting. The pilot announced that the gate had been changed and we sat there for about 15–20 minutes. These delays happen, I understand that. But what caught my attention was something the pilot himself said earlier: this was a 10:35 flight that was supposed to reach at 12:05, yet he mentioned the flight time is around 50 minutes. So what exactly is happening in the rest of that scheduled time? Also they also welcome code share passengers from Air India (were they selling tickets on Air India, AI express does not get you mileage points as it does not have the tieup)
That’s the part that makes you think about schedule management and how airlines present on-time performance. If the actual flying time is short, but the schedule is padded heavily, then “on-time” becomes a number you can manage on paper. It starts to feel like a quiet scam—not in the sense of stealing money from you directly, but in the sense of shaping expectations and reporting outcomes in a way that looks better than the reality.
And the frustrating bit is that passengers can’t do much about it. You can’t fix broken processes from your seat. You can’t connect their systems for them. You can’t stop the repeated prompts, repeated data collection, and repeated scanning. All you can do is notice it, feel the inefficiency, and wonder why something as basic as flying from Goa to Bombay still needs so many unnecessary steps to get one person onto one plane.
Share this post