Mumbai International Airport: We reached the international terminal via the transfer shuttle and were told that the gate for United Airlines was Gate C. We showed our boarding passes and got in.
*Important Note*: If your flight is late at night (after midnight) and if you show up 5 to 6 hours before the flight time, the security at the gate might not let you in and tell you to come back 3 or 4 hours before the flight. I saw that they sent back one family right in front of me and didn't allow them to go in.
Once we got in, we find that the United airlines counter doesn't open until 3 hours before the flight time. Well, that leaves us plenty of time to sit at the airport. Upon checking the counter again, I found out that they were going to open the counter at 7:30 pm, so we head for the counter around 7:25 pm and line had already started forming. We stand in line only to wait another 45 minutes before they start checking in passengers. While in the line, they give you new hand baggage tags, so it's another task to remove the old tags and replace them with new ones. By the time we got our turn, all the passengers passports were checked twice by two different agents. Also while in line, one of the agents was asking couple of questions to each of the passengers (or group if you are together) whether you packed the baggage yourself, whether anyone handed you anything at the airport, etc. etc. which are mainly security questions. We get our turn and got new boarding passes and headed for the immigration. The immigration line was really really long!! This would have taken us another 30 minutes to an hour if we were to sand in that line...but thankfully we didn't have to. We were able to bypass this line with my dad's wheelchair and get in the front. Our passports were stamped and we moved onto security. Again, there was some shortcut for the security that we were able to take and clear the security screening quickly. I think it was in the basement, or that's what it felt like. Well, finally, now I felt like we were at the airport!!
This is the first time I have seen this part of the Mumbai international airport. The place was booming with all the high-end brand shops whether it's perfumes, handbags, clothing, and also some nice food courts and restaurants. I was pretty amazed. We got to our gate and settled down. All of a sudden we realize that we have entered into an on-going party which must have been organized by the head of the mosquitoes!! They were everywhere...hovering above, below, sideways, everywhere!! Instead of fighting a loosing battle, we decided to move away from the gate and sit somewhere else where we were still close enough to keep an eye on our gate to know whether they start boarding or not. When the United Airlines agent announced the boarding, we went to the gate and headed inside for one last security screening. Once through, we had to wait again for about 30 minutes or so in the passage before they started the actual boarding process. Finally, boarding started and as we went in the plane, I noticed that the mosquitoes voluntarily checked-in and brought their party inside the plane as well!! This was really annoying because we had to constantly move our hands around to get rid of them....unbelievable!! Finally, the staff on board sprayed something to crash their party and make them disappear. And so the plane peacefully takes off.
United Airlines from Mumbai to Newark: Our second leg of the journey was from Mumbai to Newark which was going to be a good long 16 hours journey!! The seats were comfortable and manageable. The entertainment portion was, unfortunately, the same as the flight from Washington to Dubai, so there was no new addition of Bollywood movies and the same selection of Hollywood movies. The food (we had Asian veg. meal) was definitely good...and provided different variety for dinner and breakfast. And if I remember, I slept through most of the flight since I was just really tired. We reached Newark early morning around 5:15 or 5:30 am and were happy to know that we were close to getting home :)
I will continue talking about the journey in the next post...until then, have fun!!
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