I already wrote about the smoking we experienced onboard, but the whole Somon Air experience was quite strange.
Dushanbe has a fairly beautiful new international terminal, but the airport is odd. We showed up three hours before our flight, just in case, and found the airport practically deserted. About 2.5 hours before our flight, check-in opened. Our flight was the only flight leaving around that time and we had to wait for immigration and security staff to show up. No one at the airport, including the Somon Air staff, spoke a word of English. Not a word…
Somon Air has no lounge for business class passengers. A “VIP Lounge” is available, but only on a paid basis. We took a peak inside and spending $40 was not worth it for soft drinks and light snacks.
About 30 minutes prior to scheduled departure we boarded and were initially pleased by the appearance of the cabin: the color scheme was great and the cabin appeared very clean.
Sadly, the USB and power ports as well as the built-in IFE did not work. A FA blamed an expired license as the reason. We turned to the in-flight magazine as our sole source of entertainment.
Despite a relatively new 737-900, the seats were already worn and not the most comfortable when seated.
The meal itself was much less impressive than what it was served on. I appreciated the glassware and crockery. While the meal was not terrible, it was also not memorable. My chicken turned out better than Ben’s fish.
One or more of the pilots smoked every half hour, as I discussed in an earlier post.
Despite a block time of 3hr25min, we were only in the air for about 2.5 hours. Our routing took us around Afghanistan, adding a bit of flight time, and we never climbed above 30K feet (the captain said we would cruise at 24K feet).
CONCLUSION
I’ll have more details in my full trip report, but Somon Air can be summarized with the following paradox: annoyingly charming.
Lovely crockery.
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