A close friend of mine was visiting India recently, and had a CCU-MAA-CMB itinerary on Indigo at the end of her trip.

Chennai, being the black sheep of Indian airports, has a very weird terminal setup. She arrived in T1 from her domestic flight from CCU to MAA. Her bag was checked through to CMB as per the norm for international connecting flights. Upon arrival at MAA, she left T1 and walked to the international T2, entered the terminal and, since she already had her MAA-CMB boarding pass, tried to go through immigration.

However, her 6 hour transit time was deemed too long by the immigration lady and she was told to wait in the terminal 2 pre immigration landside purgatory. She couldn’t leave the terminal since she was already in and her bag was checked through and the local Indigo ticketing manager told her that she can’t pass immigration at MAA more than 3 hours away from her departure time “as per Indian immigration rules”.

We were texting this whole time and I suggested speaking to the duty manager at Indigo so that she could get through to the airside, or try to go through Indian exit immigration once again but with a different agent. She chose the latter option and was given a lecture on procedure but ultimately allowed through because the immigration officer this time around heard her plea of there not being any landslide food options.

Is this a real thing? I’ve had over 3 hour connection in DEL from D to I on Air India and others and it’s never been an issue before. Was MAA Bureau of Immigration in the wrong here? Are there actually any “Indian immigration rules” that prevent people from going through too early or were they just trying to be annoying to a random super tall (and conspicuously American) lady because they could?