Kingfisher Babe

Kingfisher Babe

My posts are going to be a bit out of order for the next few days. I have some catching up to do! Thankfully, I just arrived in Mumbai (Bombay) for the week. I'm meeting with clients over the next few days & will return to Delhi in time for the weekend.

Many things in India are run by a few GIANT firms. Why then should the airline industry be any different? Today I flew on Kingfisher Airlines. This airline is part of the bigger Kingfisher brand which includes a hugely popular beer. Even the motto of the airline seems stolen from a rejected beer advert "fly the good times".

The roughly 2 hour flight down was on a new A320 airplane with in seat televisions & satellite TV. I spent most of the flight watching CNN & sleeping. The service was honestly pretty good. I'd heard STELLAR things about the service - but mostly from my single guy friends. I think they were more impressed with the flight attendants than the service itself.

Being a flight attendant or air hostess in India seems to hark back to the early days of aviation in the states. It hasn't yet become a commoditized industry, and the key requirements to be a member of flight crew seem to be that you are a female of a certain age, with a certain look & a certain amount of money in your family. Even popular news media seems to glamorize the position still - it will be interesting to see if it ever loses it's luster.

For me, the highlight of the flight was the frequent appearance of the Kingfisher babe on my seat monitor. I found it very funny that she showed up something like 9 times during my 1.5 hour flight! Be it takeoff, landing, beginning & end of inflight service & each time the captain put on the seatbelt sign, the Kingfisher babe would appear to calmly give us our instructions. I think the casting director on this one wanted the most pan-ethnic female possible & he found her. I think you will enjoy the slew of photos I took of her over the course of my flight.

Enjoy!