Looking at some flights to Kerala, Gulf air are very reasonable, but thought I’d garner some opinions on quality of the airline. Qatar are available for ~£70 more (per person). Flown with Qatar before and v happy with their service.

Thanks,

Never flown with them although I did used to fix their DFDAU’s

Back in the day (2001-2003) used to fly with them all of the time. Were great. They’ve lost out big-stye to all the other Gulf carriers, however, so don’t know what the modern product is like now. I would imagine it’s still a good service.

OK 3 years ago to Cochin.

Yup 30 years ago, where ok then and stewardesses good fun. I believe that relative to the newer carriers like Emirates, Qatar, Abu Dhabi etc they are pretty old and underfunded. Bahrain just doesn’t have the cash available the others have.

Yes – a couple of trips to Bahrain over the last few years. Go with Qatar Air! I class them as the Arabic version of Sleazy Jet.

Travelled with them to Abu Dhabi at New year – never again…
Flight was delayed because of fog. Fair enough. Got voucher at heathrow for food and drink, ok.
Delayed coming into Bahrain, missed connecting flight. Communications non-existent, same for food and drink.
Trip ended up taking 48 hours instead of 24, massive sleep deprivation (30 hours no sleep), shortened trip and out of pocket for expenses on food in Bahrain and phone bill trying to let my hosts in Abu Dhabi know what was going on…
Asked for refund of my expenses – refused as fog was not their fault… legally they’re within their rights but there’s no way I’d trust them again if this is how badly they deal with that kind of situation – fog in the Gulf is regular, not an unpredictable situation at all…

I once took the Gulf Air flight overnight from LHR to Bahrain to save some money, never again.
Seats were about as comfortable as those in a McDonalds restaurant and lets just say you could see why it was cheap.

I would pay the extra £70 and take Qatar airways any day.

FWIW, we recently flew Oman Air cattle class to Kerala, they were fine; decent food, decent seats, loads of film choice etc.