oliver2002

Another data point: It seems the poor souls connecting to AC in LHR to/from VB AI flights were sleeping the terminal and now are being asked to get a room someplace:

Shounak

I'm going to follow your progress closely, because I'm thinking of attempting a trip to Kolkata next weekend..should I deal with Delhi straight from the US on United, or try to go through London straight to Kolkata. I'm one of the US OCIs. Was holding off on planning until the new guidelines were announced and parsed.

oliver2002

I only went for it because I found C award inventory via United. I don't think AI knows about it, but I grabbed the seats. Officially these 11xx VB flights are not for sale except by AI and P2P.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

So to get back to the argument where I've forgotten what we were arguing about but here goes...

Very little of this is my opinion. And I prefer being in the air tyvm.

I will neither nor explain nor show you any thing. You've made the silly accusation about how India throttling ME3 & others and rake in billions and make them a very lucrative disinvestment opportunity. Ok maybe you didn't say the billions part. Either ways you need to back up your claim and all that you've "shown" is that you took 2 flights one was full the other was not - none were from ME I think - but apparently that's still QED.

All I said was GoI did try to pull a fast one with the VBM flights and every one wised up to them quickly. But here we go again...

Very very wrong.

Very very wrong again

Did the math and it doesn't look good for you here either.

AI's VBM flights initially were all ONE WAY flights from USA to India. They didn't have outbound pax. They started taking pax on the outbound from India sometime in June. And when they started that the US3 complained to DOT. During this time when they were doing these one way flights and some of the returns - they weren't flying 50 flights a week to the US - it was a handful. Flights from BOM & DEL every few days that gradually built up over time. However till July/Aug or so AI did not fly a full schedule of flights to the US.

AI has had to cancel somewhere around 130 VBM flights to USA & Canada in the Jul/Aug/Sep timeframe. Similar to what they've had to do in Germany recently.

Unlike other pvt. airlines AI cannot cut salaries etc. and had almost the same daily operating costs with almost the whole fleet on the ground and a handful in the air (sometimes).

Given all this I'm still struggling to see how any of this entire episode played over these last 7-8 months has been amazing & nefarious plot by GoI & AI and is still advantageous to AI today (despite them getting hammered wherever they are flying to). But I'm sure you know better.

Insert ground/air joke of your choice here.

galaticos

AI VBM schedule per recent update goes to 31st March 2020... http://www.airindia.in/images/pdf/VB...le-flights.pdf

So no scheduled INTL flights till then i suppose

PiperAtGatesofDawn

Timatic still says you need to be a qualify by the 30 June criteria...

PiperAtGatesofDawn

You mean March 2021. Yeah I guess they're waiting to see how much worse it will get during the festivals and the onset of winter.

Of course I don't understand - if you're starting local trains in BOM, and everything else across the country - why restrict flights - what's that supposed to achieve?

oliver2002

Having air bubbles keep the evil competition at bay: if they can restrict EK/EY/QR and BA/AF/LH from competing with AI it solves their problem with keeping the national carrier afloat.

PiperAtGatesofDawn

By flying only 30% of their allowed routes and capacity?

oliver2002

Whatever little traffic is left. I understand the motivation of the MOCA to suspend the entire bilateral framework under the pretense of the pandemic, but that doesn't make it right.

xobile

Please do give us an update on your experience and route.

xobile

There's not really any reason for India to restrict access to only OCIs holding citizenship in air bubble countries, or to only allow OCIs of an air bubble country to board *in that country*. The logic of it makes no sense on the face of it, particulaly for the fact that people of different citizenships live all over the world. Nor is there any reason for India to restrict passengers from flying onwards to another country.

If you look at 7:20-7:55 of this video of the Indian Civil Aviation Minister, he is pretty explicit that he doesn't want passengers to transit in the Gulf. Proving it is an Indian restriction, not a UAE restriction (which again, has no issues having people transit otherwise, say, Pakistan to Uganda).
https://nw18videostorage.blob.core.w...LpweqLWmYsI%3D


For what it's worth, Timatic indicates that all OCIs are eligible to enter India, as do most of the memos--which indicate that OCIs are allowed to enter India, without saying it's only OCIs of certain citizenships.

Passport India
Admission and Transit Restrictions:
Restriction

Passengers are not allowed to enter.

This does not apply to passengers with an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card or booklet. (emphasis mine)

DELANRDFW

Yeah, but the naysayers will still drink the coolaid served by GOI and absolve them of all this mess.

So here's an example of how hypocrite the govts are, US and India are leading on number of infections and deaths due to COVID, however neither country has a restriction in place for passengers from the respective countries.

So when I landed back in US, nobody checked even basic temp or screening as India is not on the list. Heck, they didn't even collect the screening form handed over in flight from LHR.

At DEL I was approached by an employee offering a COVID19 negative test and exemption for INR 10k I politely declined as I already had an exemption and even if I didn't , I'll rather get tested or quarantined.

SO, between corruption and inefficient bureaucracy, only lord knows whats the true impact of this pandemic

oliver2002

Yikes. I already have an exemption cert for DEL (for my now cancelled flight), but the response from WB for the flight to CCU is still pending... atleast in CCU I can give the 'health officials' a piece of mind in Bengali and not sound like Tom Alter speaking my poor Hindi..

oliver2002

In other news AI just had to cancel their flights to FRA as the German authorities did a reciprocal withdrawal of rights under the 'bubble agreement'.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/78433671.cms