I’m somewhere over Eastern Europe at around 2pm Indian, 9:30am London, sitting in seat 47K in Air India 747-400 VT-AIE. Or maybe we’re over Turkey or Western Europe – who knows? The clouds are solid. The fairly primitive IFE (in-flight entertainment) system is no help: no moving map, no altitude, no speed, or time to run. I have no idea when we’re supposed to land: there have been no announcements from the flight deck. I just had an indifferent meal: the service is pathetic compared with Jet Airways. No wonder the Jet flight was sold out, while this is around two-thirds full. But even though the load is fairly light, I’ve wound up in a window seat with a wriggling toddler next to me. His favourite game seems to be to open the tray table, stand on it, and jump back into his seat: his mother seems rather proud of this, and does nothing to discourage him. This must be a circle of the Inferno that Dante omitted to document.

We just got an announcement! We’re at FL380, with 1:48 to run; we’re just crossing into Austrian airspace. Not a bad guess. So we’ll land around 11:30am.

[Written en route from Mumbai to London; posted on Sunday evening from Leeds when I finally got connectivity.]