How to get to India for 200 Euros one-way:

karuna

Absolutely! I certainly would. In fact, flights with only one stop somewhere in the Middle East can come out as low as £360 -£390 at certain times of the year, with just a few hours wait at transfer. I'm thinking specifically of Etihad here, but there must be others.
I'm clearly not adventurous enough for this particular deal!

Anders

143 Euros oneway sounds like a steal for anyone having a few days to spare. Istanbul is a really nice city and from London you could fly there for next to nothing on Easyjet or Pegasus airlines.

atala

Emirates quoted a price of 266 Pounds, or 367 euros for a one-way ticket, on its lowest class, Europe-India, with just two hours of stop-over in Dubai.

davidrussell

not bad, but still 2-3 times as much as the method mentioned here!

kidsan

i paid £310 return london-frankfurt-delhi last year with only a couple of hours stopover. I cant say id like all the hassle of flying via istanbul on a different carrier just to save a few pounds.

It's also worth remembering that if you fly in on a different carrier, you really need to leave a lonnnng time before your flight out. If, for instance, your easyjet flight is delayed flying into istanbul then you're in trouble if you miss the connection as they sure as hell wont wait for you!

Mickey S

In June of this year I got a London-Delhi return flight on Air India for well under £300.

And doing some price comparisons for London to India the end of March 2008 (which is as far ahead as you can book on Air Arabia), I came out with £310 return with easyJet/Air Arabia and £340 return on Alitalia - and the latter being a significantly shorter and less stressful journey on a full-service airline.

karuna

Mickey,

This Air India flight- do you mean you bought it in June or you flew in June? Only because my boyfriend and I are planning to go to Leh next summer ( ) and being the way I am I've already started researching flights. How far ahead did you book? Did you book directly with the airline? Was this from Heathrow (I wish someone would start a Cardiff - Delhi flight. I'm sure there are enough Indian people here to make it worth one a week or so)? Have you posted about this elsewhere and I've missed it? Did you expect the Spanish Inquistion?


EDIT: ooh, just noticed three Wales-based posters in a row here. Yay for us.

kidsan

Bore da! (oops, that's about the extent of my welsh i'm afraid )

Spirit of Havelock

That sounds flippin excellent!! I almost wish I still lived in Europe. So you could do two stop-over mini-holidays - Turkey & UAE en-route and still pay peanuts.. What a trip! Sounds better than a regular flight! Does anybody know if there are any smart moves for saving money for Australia-India? Probably not.....

__________________
Neither worry about, nor rejoice in the future (Ancient Egyptian saying)

pontesnm

I notice that they fly directly from Sharjah to places like Nagpur, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Kochi, Trivandrum (?), and Ahmedabad. So for persons going to say Nagpur, it saves a flight from Mumbai.

Mickey S

Does neb yn disgwyl y Spanish Inquisition! (No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition)*.

I travelled from Heathrow to Delhi in June (or it might have been late May - can't really remember) and I think the fare was about £275 on Air India. I didn't book it very far in advance - probably March, or something. I booked it through Opodo (online).

Fares were generally very low at the time I was travelling, and it would have been possible to fly with BA for about £400 (and I wish I had). The flight outward was almost empty, so it is clearly a quiet time of year to travel and it might be worth waiting for cheap deals to come up. Start looking in February or March.

*Monty Python. Undoubtedly before your time.

EDIT. I just checked my passport - I arrived in India on 16 May and departed on 1 June. Probably earlier than you intend to travel but summer is not really peak time for India and I can't imagine the fares would be much higher later in the season.

Brisso

Dirt cheap Tiger flights out of Darwin to Kochi (maybe other dests.). Of course, you've got to get there ...

davidrussell

true, tiger airways do the same with their hub in singapore even though their fares are slightly more expensive. but they fly to kochi and Chennai afaik! Another option would be AirAsia X from Gold Coast Airport (near Brisbane methinks) to Kuala Lumpur and then take AirIndiaExpress from there to different Indian cities. But neither is gonna be as dirt cheap as this one here...

But I think that the air-market is changing really rapidly right now! Gonna be exciting to see how much we're paying in a year or two to get to India or anywhere else in the world.

Mickey S

It's unlikely that fares are ever going to be much lower than they are now. The tendency is towards higher taxes to offset environmental concerns, airport charges to pay for the additional security and fuel surcharges. London's airports have already been given the go-ahead to raise their charges by something like 5% above the rate of inflation for the next few years. Airlines have little scope left for reducing the actual fare element - on a forthcoming trip to the US, my fare is £58 return and the taxes amount to £161.

My own personal opinion is that governments should act together to add VAT and other fuel duties onto aviation fuel and raise taxes and charges on airlines massively, not only to fully offset environmental damage but to discourage flying at all. Long-haul air travel should once again be considered an extravagant luxury, and a €200 fare to India is almost criminal in its irresponsibility.

karuna

Oof, they're timeless. My self-chosen title is "wretched demi-bee" on another forum but that seems to be obscure even to the Pythonistas.

Great flight info, diolch yn fawr.