Originally Posted by
SeeBuyFly
Yes, the CCU-DEL flight is a domestic (former IC) flight, and so the DEL-BOM-JFK experience is not germane.
However, all kinds of peculiar things happen with AI. My last flight with them, ~15 years ago, was on a domestic leg DEL-CCU. (This was AI, not IC.) Domestic and international (pre-Customs/immigration) passengers were mixed on the same plane. We arrived in the international terminal in CCU and exited through immigration waving our boarding passes and muttering "domestic, domestic..."
In other words, it is not impossible that domestic and international (post-Customs/immigration) passengers are carried together on the CCU-DEL flight, now that the former IC flight is an AI flight.
this is not really peculiar. AI (international operations) would carry pax on domestic legs - pax buy AI tickets on various sectors like BOM-DEL or CCU-DEL and even AMD-BOM which have a domestic leg and then the international leg. the domestic leg would be cheaper than say a IC flight or a 9W flight
these flights used the international terminals even for the domestic leg
in the OPs case the CCU-DEL flight is a domestic AI flight with no international leg (would have been an IC flight earlier).
on the other hand AI 127 is HYD-DEL-ORD (not sure if they still allow ticketing for HYD-DEL anymore) and is an international flight with a domestic leg