Episode 9

Teams now had to fly to Istanbul, Turkey (IST) from Jaipur, India (JAI). Naturally, I grabbed my eSkyGuide timetable once more. It did not have schedules for the JAI to DEL portion, so I checked Indian Airlines' site and found a schedule. The producers chose to show an MD-80 and a Boeing 747 flying, when they talked about the journey.

Rob had an off the cuff comment at one point: I'm so over India," now what is that supposed to mean? Well, I'm so over these contestant and their crappy comments. One should be thankful.

Basically, their routing had to be Jaipur to Delhi to Istanbul. They all arrived in Delhi the same time. It looked like they took Indian Airlines (IC http://indian-airlines.nic.in/scripts/index.asp). The showed an Airbus A320 taking off which is possible as they have A320s and Boeing 737 flying the route. Now really bad, they showed a Northwest Boeing 747 landing in Delhi!

In Delhi, it was kind of a rush to find the best way to get to Istanbul. Rob and Amber went to buy their tickets on the nonstop Turkish Airlines (TK) flight. Gretchen was walking by Rob and he joked that if they had booked on the earlier flight? Well, Gretchen told Uchena and he started calling around. And of course, there was a flight that went via Dubai, United Arab Emirates (DXB) to Istanbul. It would arrive at 6:30 a.m. 1h 15 minutes before the nonstop flight. Only drawback, is that they would have to leave at 8 p.m. This is a race afterall.

So Rob, Ron, Kelly and Amber left on the 4:00 a.m. TK1071 nonstop flight that arrived at 8:45 a.m. They were actually surprised not to see the others on the flight and spent a few hours wondering where they were until they found out from one of the boat drivers in Istanbul that the others had already passed by.

They end up showing a Boeing 767 taking off and also showed a Asiana Boeing 747 flying as well as an Austrian Airlines MD-80 landing in Istanbul, all incorrect and had nothing to do with the aircraft type or airlines they were flying.

There was no mention of the airlines being flown on the DEL-DXB-IST routing, which would have been Gulf Air (GF) based on the departure times; 8 p.m. this flight actually connected through Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (AUH) to get to Dubai. Dubai to Istanbul was perhaps on Turkish Airlines A310-300 TK1165.

I hate it when I have to guess the routings. Why can't they just tell us?

That was it for aviation items for this episode.