First time on AI and general thoughts about BLR?
 

I'm going to be on an AI MLE-BLR-DEL flight in a couple weeks. I'm a US citizen, and this is the first time in India (my visa is all set). Can anyone give any tips about connecting in BLR? Is it generally a decent experience, or will it be chaos? I'll be flying in business the whole way. Is there an airside AI lounge for biz passengers? Is immigration/customs generally smooth? Is there a separate line for biz passengers at immigration/customs?

Any comments are appreciated!!

Bangalore is a civilised airport relative to some others in India. Just follow the signs and you'll be fine. Not many international arrivals so lines shouldn't be too bad at all.

BLR should be fairly easy airport for you to transit/connect.

How are you getting to MLE? hope you are not doing US - India to MLE to India (to possibly US), since the 2 month visa rule applies. When you leave India, you have to wait for 2 months before returning.

i did this route a couple of years ago in ai business....it was very smooth....there was no separate line for business passengers at immigration at that point but i have been told that there is one now....i'm not quite sure if ai has a lounge in the domestic terminal....we never ended up exploring the lounge option since we had a little under an hour to catch our connecting flight....

No issues here. Going through DOH in the way to MLE. It would have actually made my life easier if I could have connected in India while going to MLE, but I didn't want any visa issues!

I am told short visits to neighbouring countries are accommodated provided your itinerary includes it when you enter India.

BLR is a fine medium-sized modern airport. You should have no airport issues. Good luck.

(Changed from "small" to "medium" in light of following posts. :))

:confused:

A small airport is my home airport, IXE. BLR is positively massive in comparison...

Indeed, 12 million pax per year is not anything to sneeze at.

Relative sizes (2010) :

Atlanta : 89 million
Heathrow : 64 million
Hong Kong : 50 million
Sydney : 35 million
Mumbai : 28 million
LaGuardia : 24 million
Stansted : 18 million
Athens : 15 million
Bangalore : 12 million
Hamburg : 11 million
Cincinnati : 8 million
Goa : 3 million
Mangalore : 850,000

Wow! Surprised that the number of passenger movements for SYD is about 1.5 times the population of Australia!

2 Months rule is for Tourist Visa.

OP: are you on Business or Tourist Visa?

Tourist Visa. My read of all the regs is that I would be ok transiting in India before actually entring the country so long as I could show my complete itinierary. That being said, I didn't want to take the chance.

you can transit as often as you like....unless you go through immigration it is not considered entering the country....