Had to laugh when I read this article: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/77199931.cms

Really sad to see such a misuse of a pandemic....

What's wrong if Indian airlines are getting in on the act? Competition on routes is good for the consumer. Why should AF/KLM and AI only profit on these routes?

AI flying exclusive routes and gouging customers was bad. And UA came in and hammered their prices down on the US flights.

Nothing wrong with any 'new' airline getting in on the act, just like it is defined via the bilateral between NL and India. (21 flights by KLM and AI each per week: http://164.100.60.133/bilateral/Bilateral.pdf ) This artificial curtailment of supply is hurting the consumer...

IMO, if these are still considered "repatriation" flights, then they should be operated solely for that purpose. But that is not happening.
By creating these bubbles, the onus now lies with passengers & travel agents as compared to the embassies. With that, the goal to assist stuck citizens is not being achieved, causing inconvenience, confusion and mental stress to many. And to add, another issue is that Govts and airlines will now misuse the "bubble" clause to bend rules, which means, we will now only see the pandemic get worse. Both USA and India are perfect examples as by creating these bubbles between two covid19 hot-spots, there won't be much vetting and the pandemic will only get worse.

This is so true.


Again, so true!
We have now had so many many stories of various people stuck (especially India / USA). And some of these stories are very sad.
A dear friend lost her father...and could not make it to the funeral in India. They finally decided to not go at all...as the process was quite complicated (in the early days of VB missions).

On the other hand - some other people flew India-USA on AI ..and got tickets as they "knew someone" in the right places, etc.

Sadly that has nothing to do with any 'bubbles' but with the inadequate public health care infrastructure in these two countries that can't manage to provide adquate tracing and effective containment of a pandemic.

This entire VB and 'bubble' thing is a scam to keep out competition and ensure a steady stream of visitors with suitcases to the Hon Minister and his minions to get their own exemption. If he had the Indian consumer in mind he could have suspended all bilaterals until 2023 and allow any Indian airline and any airline the other country to operate as many flights as they like. If there is demand companies will deploy capacity there. If they can't do so effeciently, they will lose out to those who can, even if it means that the traffic goes via the hubs of the EU3 or ME3.

as i mentioned in another thread, my contact at air india told me there will be no regular scheduled flights till the 6th of september....however, vistara has started selling tickets to some international destinations from the 12th of august onward....my mother needs to travel to singapore so have booked her on a 14th august flight....lets see what happens....

Thank you for the info!

Good luck to your mother.

This tweet is hillarious... as are the responses.

Funny and sad at the same time.

Interestingly, AI customer service has transitioned to Twitter for announcements and respond to queries. There is much more updated info on Twitter than the AI website.

Just reading thru Twitter (search for "Air India") shows the severity of the pandemic on air travel. Read one AI passenger showing helplessness when he/she had 5 flights cancelled. AI is not issuing any refunds. So I can see a long battle with customer service.

battle will follow once you can get in touch with customer service....that is not easy to do at the moment....

their flying returns department is still not functioning & even getting through to their regular customer service is a task....very often you will stay on hold for half an hour or more, only to get connected to their customer satisfaction survey the moment someone picks up the phone....last week i called for 3 days straight & i could barely hear the agent every time someone picked up....the voice was so faint that i had to hang up....happened over a dozen times....

Todays ablution:

Well AI's probably not doing this route because they don't think they can fill up enough seats charging extortionist rates.

Interestingly enough it looks like SG is flying this route because the plane (being wet leased along with crew from Hifly Portugal) is somewhere around AMS. Rather than spend money on the flying an empty aircraft to India.. they've decided to try and pick up some pax on the way here.

I'm not sure if this is going to be a regular route for SG. They might keep it to do UK or US runs. Probably UK because they can't do US runs with just 1 plane.

So anyone booking AI for VBM - please keep monitoring your reservation daily! My DEL-ORD was changed from 13 to 12 to 9th and today morning found it magically changed to 1st August (today late evening, tomorrow AM!!) ... cancelled all AI and now booked UA as they have loaded full schedule till 31st August!