I go to Pune once a year and have historically flown DL BOS-AMS-BOM. My Pune hotel would then send a car to fetch me from my BOM hotel. That changed after DL pulled out of the AMS-BOM route.

That left me with the following options if I wanted to keep my business on DL:

• BOM via CDG on AF
• DEL via CDG on AF
• DEL via AMS on KL
• DEL via LHR on VS

My company will only pay for premium economy, and if I want to fly J, I have to pay the fare difference out of pocket. The last two years, that was money well spent. This time around, I booked BOS-AMS-DEL during the fare sale. It turns out that my J ticket was cheaper than the lowest PE tickets at the time, so I got a pretty good deal.

Getting from DEL to PNQ is booked on 6E. There is nothing glamorous about 6E, but they're efficient, the planes are new and well maintained, and the crews are friendly.

One word of caution: You'll know you've landed in a developing country when you get to PNQ. That airport terminal is a dump.

Sorry I value my life too much to do this ever again. I did it once. The driver was falling asleep and swerving the whole time. You do realize that road is considered the most dangerous in the world for accidents right? I'll take a flight into Pune while you play russian roulette :)

I still do the BOM-PNQ drive but I don't know why, a few years ago I had a driver fall asleep and crash (fortunately nobody hurt). Now I try my best to keep the guy talking.

The two times I have gone to Pune, I used a driver both times from BOM. I guess I was lucky since I didn't have any issues but traffic was miserable getting out of BOM and then crossing that single lane bridge (which is under construction for years now) took forever.

But I have used a driver most times I am going to cities without airport, despite the scary driving conditions, rather than take the train. I wouldn't take the trains again. They are dirty, broken down, old, and always full even in so-called "1st Class". And always delayed. Just plain nasty! and the train stations are even worse. If not for our local rep being with me, I would never dream of doing it. Nothing exotic about it. But work is work.

Another option (something only FTers can appreciate) would be to fly to BLR (DTW-CDG-BLR) and connect to an early morning (~6am) flight to Pune. AF flight gets in ~1am as I recall. BLR is a much, much saner airport than BOM/DEL.

Thanks to competition on the BLR flights these days, you can get more miles for about the same price to BOM :)

Interesting !
 

WASBLR -

What an interesting option! I did find some good PE flights on AF going from DTW->BLR.

The only real issue is timing, flights from BLR to PNQ are much more sparodic, I would get in at 1am to BLR and the first flight to PNQ is at 8am ugh ! And that would be after a 5 hour layover in CDG. There are just no easy answers dang it ! :)

I always pad my schedule with a few extra days on each side, just to give my body time to recover. Just getting there is exhausting, and then spending two weeks working there takes a toll.