ghfatw

I have done connnections in Delhi several times. One thing to be careful about is that if you are connecting in Delhi from an international flight and transferring onto American Airlines -- they will manually pull your bag and you identify it. This process can take awhile so do not do tight connections going through Delhi. I agree the lounge situation in Delhi is not great but the airport is much improved from what it was a few years ago.

hillrider

AA codeshares only on that flight. You can call reservations and have you interlined on a later, more-convenient 9W flight (that's what I'll be doing). If you're counting miles, be aware that most 9W bookings don't earn AA miles: for example, my N-class AA ticket interlines into a V-class 9W flight, and V doesn't accrue anything on AAdvantage (so I've signed up for JetPrivilege...for fun!).

Also, as someone else hinted, in certain cases it's cheaper to buy the domestic portion as a separate ticket than as part as a through fare.

riteshraja

I thought there was some rule that said you have to take the first departing flight.

hillrider

Nope: AA international through fares use the IATA rule that allows you to take any flight within 24 hours and not be counted as a stopover (which some fare allow anyway). And, of course, this is moot if you're buying the domestic segment on a different fare/ticket.

Incidentally, there's no such rule on domestic/canada fares either, but the window is reduced to 4 hours.

For award travel, rules are different, and see the wiki for details.

mikeef

Doing a quick MR to DEL this weekend, arriving at 8:30 pm from ORD and turning on the 12:15 back to ORD. From recent posts, it appears that things have gotten better at DEL. Any reason I'll need more than an hour to get from the shared lounge to the gate?

Thanks,
Mike

dstan

Here's my experience from early March 09:

aktchi

I assume you either don't need or already have the Indian visa. One hour is plenty to get from the lounge to the gate.

You already know that the lounge is before security, but after a long flight one's judgment and action tend to be unpredictable, so do remember not to go through security, because coming back out can be a hassle. My wife was able to talk her way out, but others have reported problems.

Good luck, let's know how it went. May I ask how much the ticket was?

mikeef

Already got.

You may. It was about $1,000, but that included a 10% discount coupon that they emailed me. Not the single-most cost effective run, with about 33k EQMs as the result, but it's highly time-efficient.

Mike

mikeef

Left BOS 4/17, returned 4/19.

Flew biz in both directions. I miss the mini-pizzas at the ORD FL.

I'm still amazed by the fact that there is a middle seat in the J cabin. I sat on the aisle of the middle row, but on the side away from the bathroom, figuring that the middle seat passenger would choose to go the other direction to get up. Also frustrating that you can't fully extend the seat if you have a bag by your feet.

Other tidbits: The food was actually quite good. Chicken for dinner at night, something during the day and Uno's pizza before we landed. A family of five was sitting right next to me, and the kids were great, but the father in the family took off his shoes and was barefoot almost the whole flight. Eww. And, as expected, my IFE didn't work, with the screen extremely dark. They brought me one of those little digi-players from F, which was higher quality but didn't have the choices I wanted. Fortunately, I'm a big fan of BYO IFE.

The flight landed 1 1/2 hours late, which gave me 2h15 to get through customs, check back in and clear security. Customs was nothing, and no one even questioned why I was only staying a few hours. I blew right through there in minutes. You have to clear customs and then exit the airport before going to departures.

As I tried to re-enter, I realized that I had made a rookie mistake; I had forgotten to print out a copy of my itinerary, which is needed to enter the airport, and I couldn't pull it up on my blackberry. Oops. The security agents wouldn't bend and eventually sent me to a customer service center, where they called an AA agent to come get me. Total elapsed time: 30 minutes. I checked in quickly (where I got the only question about why I was staying for such a short period of time) and went off to immigration.

Note about the airport: Anything that is controlled by the airline (such as check-in) works great. Anything controlled by another body is not. At immigration, they had one line for J/F, but didn't do anything about controlling who went in that line. There were six people in front of me and clearly this immigration agent was not being paid on productivity. I watched as every other line moved quickly (afraid to switch, of course, knowing that would be the moment that my line started to move) and it took 30 minutes to get to the front.

1h15 minutes left before my flight, and I approached security. The security agent told me that they just called my flight and that I should get through as quickly as possible. I decided to check out the lounge quickly and saw that it was as much of a dump as it was last time I was there.

Security was polite but totally over-the-top. Everything had to come out of your pockets and everyone was wanded. Needless to say, the line moved slowly. I made it to the gate with plenty of time, where they separated the lines into men and women for another round of security on the jet bridge. Bags were searched and everyone got another wanding. I was thrilled to make it onto the plane.

We left on-time and the flight back was similar to the flight there. IFE didn't work again and the FA didn't use FEBO, meaning I didn't get my first choice of entree, but the staff was generally friendly and got me to ORD on-time.

DEL experience was definitely a downer, but if you go in with really low expectations they will, at worst, meet them.

Mike

riteshraja

Any particular website to book the Radisson for a good rate or is radisson.com the only option.

hillrider

I stayed at the Radisson a few weeks ago and would not recommend it: although my confirmation was for a room described as "POOL GARDEN FACING- TERRACE GARDEN FACING ROOMS" and my reservation had a request for a quiet room, I was assigned one that was in the front overlooking a 4 lane road with a 4 lane elevated highway built in the middle of it. As soon as saw the room they gave me I called the reception to ask for the type of room that they had confirmed me but was told "sorry, none available"--in other words, tough luck. And I am a member of their frequent stay program as well. I got no compensation for what was a downgrade in my book (but not in theirs) and when I deservedly hammered them on the online survey they sent me, I got an email from the manager using a send-only address that my "preferences would be noted for the next time".

When I returned to Delhi for 3 nights I stayed at the ITC Maurya (a Starwood Luxury Collection hotel) instead for about the same cost, and there was a drastic difference in quality. It's ~ INR 250 to catch an EasyCab to get to/from there and Wi-Fi is INR 600, but the sleep was unperturbed.

Now I understand why other folks on this thread recommended the Maurya or the Sheraton. Lesson learned.

riteshraja

How much time to/from ITC Maurya. Lets say Friday night going and Saturday afternoon coming back to DEL.

hillrider

My experience was arriving on a Monday afternoon from the Domestic terminal and departing Wednesday at 8pm for the international terminal; the trip from the domestic terminal was 20 minutes, the one to the international about 25. The Radisson was ~ 10 minutes from either terminal. I am not familiar with traffic patterns for other days/times.

Spiff

You can have the hotel pick you up. There was nothing added to my bill and I tipped my driver in cash.

hillrider

Apparently they stopped the service (according to http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starw...-thread-2.html ; I should have--but didn't--check)