I know FT sometimes is pretty AR about cross posting.

So lets post here question in a different way to get same information.

Will frequent international travelling FTer based in India be kind enough to share how IDB works in India?

Specific questions:


1) Does it matter if ticket was purchased in US vs purchased in India?

2) If airline books you on another airline (say 9W on UA due to cancelled BRU flights) and another airline denies boarding, who remains responsible for you? (* CRITICAL QUESTION *)

3) What is actual cost to airline to IDB you? (only hotel stay? any comp?)

5) Assuming protection from Govt is de minimus, what is actually practiced by carriers in real life?

Keyser, Oliver - any input?

in my opinion it should be 9w who remains responsible....

while not quite the same situation, based on a personal experience from many years ago, i was flying on one through ticket del-bru-lhr-bru-nyc-bru-del with the bru-lhr-bru segment on sn & the rest on 9w....while checking in at the airport in del i was informed that the bru flight was oversold & since they could see on my ticket that i was connecting to lhr therefore they could offer me a direct flight to lhr instead of going via bru....i asked them what would happen to my sn segments & they said they would take care of it & i would be allowed to continue from lhr-bru & onwards....

so i took the direct del-lhr flight but after landing in lhr i went over to the sn desk to check if what jet had told me was true....as i suspected, they informed me that my ticket stood cancelled as i did not fly the original bru-lhr leg with them....since i had 3 days in lhr before my next flight i called jet & they took a day to sort things out & got me a new lhr-bru ticket on sn....

When oversold, airlines in India are very rigid about checkin cutoff times, they always get a few that way

You are offered to be re-booked for free and thats about it. 9W/AI will put you up in a decent contracted hotel and feed you there. The DGCA has regulations in place that are similar to EU261, the IDB compensation is peanuts though when converted to �/$.

Non-EU carrier departing to the EU doesn't have EU261 protection.

The carrier rebooking you is supposed to check if the carrier transporting has positive space before rebooking. If the accepting carrier has no proof it accepted the endorsement, it can deny checkin and send you back to the original carrier.

Mostly, what oliver said.

IDB in India does have some govt protection but it is peanuts when converted to $/Euro

Thats why important to be nice to ground staff.

Usual protocol is if you checkin by their cutoff then they will put you on other airline (if possibe) otherwise put you up in hotel, tranfer you and give vouchers for food at hotel.

Again, there is no advantage of having purchased ticket in US (other than disputing with credit card if possible at all)

Purchasing appropriate travel insurance might be useful. But read fine prints twice before purchasing it. (if they actually give you that upfront)

IN this particular case. 9W DID NOT do anything wrong.

UA accepted reservation, issued its own PNR, invited pax for OLCI, tried to sell upgrade and also assigned seat. In fact, it was still accepting new reservation while trying to prevent original 9W pax from checking-in.

What UA was doing was sleazy.

It seems they were afraid of weight due to shortened runway and in the event they had to fly with 40 empty seats wanted to minimize number of pax they have to accomodate on the other airlines. (Sending pax to 9W counter was hoping to avoid successful check-in)

Unfortunately for them, some of the brussels affected pax were well connected and someone high up in aviation chewed up someone's ear within UA management. God knows what actually was said but story told is that UA was told that "deplane as much cargo you need to be within weight limits but accomodate brussels affected pax as far as you do have empty seats or else..."

So after another sleazy attempt at trying to collect 100 USD for the second bag on a ticket that clearly listed 2PC as baggage allowance, they allowed checkin to all 9W pax and plane took off early with about 9 empty seats.

Lessons learned:
- like most things in india, you are at mercy of the lowly supervisor present
- be polite but persistent -(dont even think about threatening them to sue)
- like everything else in India, it pays to be well connected
- for economy travel, UA is a terrible choice (although its early scheduled departure was helpful in this case because at 9 PM, you can still call people without disturbing their sleep)