Air India - travel experiences, good, bad or indifferent

We have bought our tickets to fly in January from Paris to Chennai. There is a plane change in Delhi. The Air India ticket has us arriving (in theory) in Delhi at 09.50, connecting with the 12.00 flight to Chennai.

Is this realistic? Do we have to go through immigration at Delhi? Do we have to collect our luggage and go through customs?

Just wondering what horrors people have encountered.

mm.. your thread title is misleading and perhaps even biased! It is better to title is straight... 2:10 hrs changeover time at Delhi for international arrival would get better answers.

Anyways, you are talking about January. Think FOG/SMOG/SNOW (both Europe and Delhi). Generally, Air India would accommodate in the next flight, if there are delays and you bought the ticket Paris-Delhi-Chennai.
If on time, 2hrs is a sufficient time.

Not biased. I just wanted to get people's attention. And maybe experience.

2 hours should be fine - if you miss a connection, there's always another flight. We were "upgraded" on a flight from Bagdogra to Kolcutta on Air India - sat next to a guy in a stretcher being airlifted to hospital after a car crash - don't see that often!

<cross-posted with BigJed just now>

Good point. Last I landed in Delhi, early Jan. last year, we were lucky to be able to land at all through a brief lull in the thick fog, and had to make several attempts to do so; I guess if not, we'd have diverted elsewhere (or circled forever some more). After us, the air "traffic jam" built up again.

It's just unpredictable, but heavy fog is a known and major issue in north India in winter yes (also with a view to train traffic etc. Possibly endless delays or cancellations altogether again, themselves of course having a snowball effect on even a much larger area, and so on.)

(Then indeed leaving from Europe on a bright sunny winter's day the year before it, I heard from later arrivals that my Amsterdam Schiphol airport had become snow-bound and so shut down just shortly after I left, and so they again stuck forever there and in various places along the way.)

I don't know, I think personally and having a layover on an international flight into India, I'd feel better having say a night there, perhaps several to stretch your legs some and acclimatize and maybe make your first tentative steps into this wonderful and wondrously bedazzling new world that you find yourself in, in whatever place you landed. (Don't know if you've been before. And would depend what time you have, of course.)

But, that's just me, and certainly no one has to follow suit. But two hours strikes me as short'ish. If all goes well, then perhaps, yes. Thing is in India it rarely does (Then when you weren't counting on it, it suddenly may for a change, of course.)

I mean I'd find it short'ish at say Schiphol or Heathrow or wherever, for that matter. And the latter as I guess some of us will know are huge. On that note, wouldn't the poster have to get over to the domestic terminal? (And so pass customs and probably collect luggage etc., indeed, now find and hop on a transit shuttle?) I don't know that, but could all take a bit. Just getting through customs there I've never found, er, exactly swift.

Should be fine. To your title, my only disaster was 3 1/2 hour wait for luggage from AI the second day that they moved over to Delhi T3.

The toilet situation was the only real 'disaster'. It appeared to me that 'toilet cleaning' was not that high up the totem pole as far as preferred duties were concerned on AI flights. Other than that fine - great service. Oh yeah, we over shot the runway a tiny bit on a Delhi-Mumbai 747 leg one time.

You bet it is biased. One has to just ask people who transit in CDG, Paris. A nightmare worse that old LHR , Every time I transit CDG I pray; and I am SkyTeam Elite Plus; I can imagine what people must go through in CDG who have no status with their airline, and/or know the mess that even beats Boston's big dig.

To answer your question: International-->Domestic is typically 90 minutes even in the world's busiest airport. So, DEL 130 should be OK if the carrier is AI. In fact, AI has been known to hold the connecting plane for you even if you are the only connecting passenger by up to 30-40 minutes.

20 years ago on the spur of the moment I flew from Cochin with Indian Airlines to Trivandrum connecting with an Air India flight that took off to Colombo 20 mins after the Cochin flight landed. I was taken in hand the whole way from being sheparded by cabin crew to be waiting first at the plane door when it opened, met at the foot of the stairs ran/dragged from the domestic to the international departure terminal for a hand over of the ticket/cash then dragged to the plane which took off on time with my checked luggage stowed aboard also.
The disaster was that it poured with rain in Sri Lanka for the 2 weeks it took me to get a ticket back to India.
After that I never had a bad word to say about the Indian airlines.

...

Don't you just lurv some of them anecdotes

Thanks for the interesting replies.

Machadinha, we don't have the option of a layover in Delhi. The Air India ticket we have already bought is through to Chennai. Presumably AI thinks the connection is possible but I have my doubts. A few years back we flew to Manila via Hong Kong with just a one hour connection at HK. As we came off the plane (don't you hate the word "deplaned") we were greeted by women holding up destination signs: Manila, Bangkok, Hanoi, Sydney. We were escorted direct to the gates. I doubt this will happen in Delhi.

NYCANK, I too hate CDG. One time we were given our boarding cards and spent a long time searching for our departure gate. Finally we asked an employee and were told that gate didn't exist. The check-in staff had got it wrong. Another time when we were waiting for our luggage at the carousel we saw on a screen: luggage arriving in 7 minutes. Absolutely right. The first cases arrived on the belt in 7 minutes. Then the belt stopped. And started. And stopped. I guess that since the plane had come from the dubious city of Bangkok they were X-raying every bag. Or maybe they had sniffer dogs. And CDG is the only airport that has lost our luggage.

One simple question. Will we go through Immigration at Dehli or at Chennai?

Anything is possible in India Air India can do what it feels like Or rather the paper pushing babucrats.

Immigrations will be at the first port of entry DEL, iff the flight number is different and plane change. The rule is always first port of entry. Somehow some national carriers flaunt this rule, by not allowing pax to deplane, or if deplaning, not letting them cross the sterile Airside.

Hi nycank

The AI site gives this information about our flights.
Outward the flights Paris-Delhi and Delhi-Chennai have the same flight number though there is an aircraft change at Delhi. We arrive at Delhi T3 and depart for Chennai from T1 and arrive at Chennai T1.

To the moderator: Can we change the thread title please? Especially when the thread displays on the IM homepage this isn't fun at all. Thanks.

Yeah, whats with the thread title, OP.

(if you wanted to get people's attention, as you say, you could have titled it Halle Berry-nude or something like that)