Help. Stuck in India. Need to get back to US
 

Hello all - my friend and his family have been stuck in Bangalore and have been trying since late-March to get back to Los Angeles. He is on an H1B Visa, but his son is a U.S. Citizen.

They have tried repeatedly to get on repatriation flights with US government without any luck. He tells me that when Air India posts repatriation flights, they are often sold out within a couple of minutes. He also tried KLM/Air France flights through Europe, but those were flights have been restricted for EU & US Citizens.

Looks like domestic flights within India have opened up, so he can get to Mumbai (preferred) or Delhi to travel. I've tried to look at transiting through another country that has existing flights into the US, but not seeing any options. Any ideas to get him back to the US? Appreciate your advice.

i've heard from a couple other people that they are unable to get a ticket for a repatriation flight so i'm sure they must be selling out quickly....since your friend's son is a u.s. citizen then perhaps the u.s. embassy would be the best bet....keep calling them....

WIth international air traffic to/from India set to resume in late June early July (Lufthansa have filed flights to BOM & DEL in late June) I would just wait a bit and catch a flight to the US via Europe in 5-6 weeks. EU countries will allow you to transit in Europe if you are on your way home. The fact that you are resident in the US and travelling with your US family member will allow you to travel.

QR just canceled my late June booking. Things are getting much worse in India and international flights are unlikely. On the other hand, repatriation flights are over.

I think there are intensive negotiations going on with the DGCA behind the scenes. My guess is that we will see resumption of flights in July with a few repatriation pax to/from India in the cabin and belly full of cargo below. The EU3 all have filed flights to India in their restart schedules, I doubt they would do that with some planning certainty. Cargo rates have skyrocketed and the demand continues to be high.

AI continues to fly all over the place under the repatriation banner of the MEA.

UA has already announced their flights to DEL starting in July from EWR and SFO. No flights from BOM though in July. Not sure if they have started selling tickets yet though.

OP: Check this out
https://zeenews.india.com/india/vand...87411.html/amp

booking begins at 5pm on 5th june....

https://www.news18.com/news/auto/air...t-2651663.html

Some insight on the negotiations going on:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/76276555.cms

It seems LH has been granted permission to take regular passengers out of India: They operated LH762 to DEL on Tuesday without passengers and it came back to Munich full with pax this morning.

:tu:

Lufthansa has announced new repatriation flights from India
https://www.lufthansa.com/in/en/flight-information

Although note that they are only for foreign citizens and Indians holding US GC or Canadian PR or are married to US/Canada Citizens.

The US DOT was alerted by DL that AI is operating regular service to the US under the repatriation banner while US carriers are still barred from flying to India. Now they have 30 days to remedy the situation:

not surprising....trust both ai & goi to try & take advantage of this situation....

If you see the tweets about it its gut wrenching... essentially AI gets the right to operate to various destinations all over the world at their terms and the GoI pretends they are providing some kind of essential service. All they need to do is lift the ban on international flights and things will return to a new normal.