TravellingMan

It is quite strange to note the wording for each country is slightly different - https://www.civilaviation.gov.in/en/...nsport-bubbles

Seems to be aimed at the airlines rather than the country. Your brother's best bet is to fly via Europe. Or fly via Maldives/Bhutan. Quite strange and meaningless from COVID standpoint.

DELANRDFW

Hi,
So, I finished my excursion to India to bring my mother back.
In short BA will not allow Indian citizen with US GC to board from India, unless the spouse is a US citizen. Spouse doesn't have to be traveling with passenger.

Trip to India was uneventful, at LHR they gave every passenger a plastic face shield along with a PPE kit containing 2 hand sanitizer gel packets and 1 disinfectant wipe.
I had a PCR test done and uploaded the result ~48 hrs to the portal to get institutional quarantine exemption approved at DEL.
They asked for the confirmation at Arrivals and stamped my left forearm with home quarantine for 14 days
After I picked bags and cleared customs, there was another queue to show your stamp and exit the airport.
I noticed the COVID test waiting lounge, which was right outside of customs.

On return back the PPE provided by BA at DEL was substantial, 2 surgical face masks, 4 packets of hand sanitizer gels and 2 disinfectant wipes and BA logo face shield.

Rest all was standard departure procedure ex Delhi and also transit at LHR.
Onboard the service in First was limited to 1 big meal box and a small meal box for breakfast. Cold liquids were served in plastic cups and hot liquids in paper cups.
However, full turndown services were provided along with amenity kit and PJs.

First Lounge at LHR had table service from menu which consisted of usual breakfast buffet items.

Concorde room is closed but Concorde terrace is open.
Showers are available but Spa is closed.
Hope this helps and blame any typos on jet lag 😴

PiperAtGatesofDawn

While it's unfortunate and a big hassle for your brother I'm still not sure this is a grand conspiracy engineered by AI & GoI.

Imagine the 100 OCIs stuck in UAE... out of which 80 won't travel because of no need/too much hassle. 20 go back to their own/third countries to fly to India. All 20 cannot utilize AI flights to get there from UAE. And then 15 fly back to India on non-AI carriers like LH, BA, AF etc. And 5 fly on AI. While the numbers are totally made up - it seems like an absurd amount of effort for AI to try and get some revenue. That too from the 2-3 nations which do not have the foreigner clause!

EY/EK will of course not blame their own govts. But whatever the issue was there - it wasn't to boost AI's seat sales. Unless AI had an exemption to carry foreigners and EY/EK didn't.

ft4lyf

Useful report!
academic question - your mother qualified to return with you based on your US status or is a US citizen as well?

Keyser

interesting....this is not what i went through in del last week....they didn't stamp my forearm till the time i was about to leave the airport after customs....that too after a lot of confusion regarding the exemption certificate....

galaticos

So my neighbor arrived from LHR to BLR 3 days ago on BA.. he had a RTPCR test and had uploaded for exemption.. on arrival, temperature and oxymeter test was done and found normal (same as me a month back) but no negative report or exemption approval asked for.. released without anything else.. no home quarantine either (I wasn’t asked to as well but I thought it was because of negative test)

he is about 58 so looks like a senior citizen.. maybe that’s why?

DELANRDFW

Based on her being a US GC and my late father being a US citizen and take the latter half the statement as equivalent to truth from Donald Trump mouth.
More of an off the record exception.And once boarding passes were printed, nobody asked another question. However, they did decline boarding to spouse of H1b and and also another US GC holding couple

DELANRDFW

They now have a dedicated counter for exemptions way before immigration.

DELANRDFW

State of Karnataka is not asking for exemption, if you are asymptomatic, you are good as gold

DELANRDFW

I respectfully disagree, its all to limit competition for AI. Everyone know ME3 carriers were controlling Indian foreign travel market and if they allow QR and EK, their share will drop. I had only 40 odd pax on London Del flight and back,whereas AI load was full.
Same for flights to US, AI business class was sold out.

It's so much to steer traffic to AI, otherwise help me understand why people can't transit UK when both UK and the flying carrier along with destination country have no issues.
AI got caught with hands in cookie jar when they were flying close to full schedule on pretext of repatriation flights and when confronted by respective agencies, they created the so called bubbles which still benefit AI.
All in the game to increase balance sheet for divestment ahead.

oliver2002

Yep, the MOCA is already dreaming that this is the path forward even after things become normal. Thankfully the other countries will not agree

Keyser

that's what was missing last week....they had a line for exempt passengers but no counter....so no stamping was done & hence the confusion that followed....

oliver2002

Question regarding transit in UK:

Since WB's restrictions on flights between CCU to/from DEL & BOM is nicely messing up my schedule, I may have to use the new CCU-LHR service (shudder) to get back home. United is happy to sell me CCU-LHR-MUC in Business for 63.5k points and a few $ in taxes, so it is an option... (I suppose I have get myself a tiffin carrier with food to take along)

The bubble trouble page says the following:

So it looks like this could be possible for me to use to get back to Germany?

Keyser

definitely seems like you are eligible....

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Saying things like one of my flights was full and the other flight I took was empty and therefore AI is somehow cheating is absurd. Also, you're giving AI far more credit than they're due. They operate at the highest levels of governmental incompetency & bungling.

They did take advantage of the VBM flights initially but everyone caught on to it in a week or so after they started breaking the VBM rules. Today AI has zero competitive advantage in any international route over a local airline.

If they're flying full J to UK & US today - kudos to them - they've won that business. People could have traveled on UA or BA just as easily. Those airlines and others are allowed to fly just as many flights with the same pax categories as AI. Similarly for the ME - AI flies the same types of pax and is allowed the same number of flights as the ME3s. If people choose AI over ME3 then that's a real business win for AI. GoI hasn't in any way officially or unofficially discouraged people from flying non-AI flights to or from India.

As for the disinvestment - nobody is going to buy them. And neither is flying 20 extra "unfair" flights going to be more than a drop in the billions of dollars of debt they have.