Originally Posted by
stephanos99
I did all the research on the visa requirements when I booked my ticket. Originally I was assuming that I would need the transit visa (which can be booked online but only within a certain amount of time from use) since I didn't know about the special status of those AI flights, so I had set a reminder to myself to apply for it. When the time came, I did more research and I found out the information on the AI flights being considered "international" (on flyer talk) and read that if you were flying on one of those flights your connection did not involve you "transiting" in India (since it was INTL-to-INTL) so a visa was not needed. I confirmed by finding that same information on the Air India web site, which gave the specific flight numbers that this applied to. Since returning, I have done a search on this policy change to find out the actual timing and other details, and have come up with zero results. So my guess is that if I had done any such search in Nepal before leaving, I would have come up empty again. What else I could have done?
Did you try Timatic ?
UA provides access, anyone handling there own international travel needs to be familiar with Timatic.
Did you verify by calling an Indian consulate or embassy? Internet is great for some things but nothing is better than a primary source.
And yes it is unfortunately the rules changed but that does not change you own the responsibility -- not the airlines.
Personally I don't transit a country that I don't have visa access -- there are too many things that can go wrong where you might need access.
(BTW, if you are overflying a country and the aircraft needs to land, there are process for handling that - so I don't worry about that. That's a different issue and has been discussions in other thread about that situation that we don;t need to drive into now.)