I am looking to book a domestic segment - DEL-BOM-DEL. I searched thru threads for booking sites but some mention that the ticket would be a paper ticket.

What is the easiest and most reliable place to book this ticket?

A lot of sites are showing me the price in Rupees. Fine by me but is it ok to use the site because some indicate you have to be of Indian nationality to use the site.

DEL-BOM route is well-served with flights from just about every major carrier. For good service I would suggest Kingfisher or Jet Airways. Indian Airlines (Air India's IC flights) is ok too. Among no frills (ie no food) Spice Jet is ok. Avoid Jet Lite.

You should have no difficulty buying an e-ticket online, either from the carrier itself or an online agency. If possible, my prejudice is to buy from the carrier directly; that way if something goes wrong they are responsible and can't tell you to deal with your travel agent.

For schedule research try ixigo.com, cleartrip.com, makemytrip.com (click on "India site" if necessary). Ixigo will direct you to the carrier for buying the ticket. The other two are travel agencies and will sell the ticket themselves for a fee already included in their quotes.

Those are old rules and you can ignore them. However, some websites may not accept foreign credit cards (Air India being one IIRC), possibly leaving you with the same problem is practice. If you run into this, just buy from an agent or another airline.

Thank you aktchi. More searching and found 1 more problem. We will be arriving on an international flight and have atleast 3 big bags with us. Kingfishers site is vague on how much they charge for baggage in excess of the allowed 25kg per person. Any idea how much they would charge?

Kingfisher won't accept non-Indian credit cards despite their site telling you otherwise, but Jet will happily take my UK visa card with no issues. Their schedule is better than kingfisher's too, with more choice of flights.

They will both issue e-tickets. Book direct with them if you can...as one of the PP's said, if something goes wrong it's the airline's responsibility to fix it.

I see you are an AA EXP, are you arriving into India on AA? if yes then get them to add in a domestic segment on Kingfisher or Jet into your PNR and you can pay AA as you normally do. solves nationality and indian credit card requirements.

I got Kingfisher tickets through AA last year as part of an international itinerary.

LHR BOM (BA)
BOM COK (IT)
COK BOM (IT)
BOM LHR (BA)

and

LHR BOM (VS)
BOM GOI (IT)
GOI BOM (IT)
BOM LHR (VS)

this way your baggage allowance is from international flights. I spoke to the IT reservations and they confirmed as my itinerary had international segments, they would allow me to carry whatever the international limits were on the domestic flights.

hope this helps.

Yes I am flying on AA - EXP so will be using some evip's. The ORD-DEL flight arrives at ~8:00 PM and the ONLY flight which is a codeshare on 9W is at a rather early ~6:00 AM the next day. I will call again and get them to price out Kingfisher.

The smartest thing would be to spend one night in some inexpensive hotel near DEL airport. However, you'll get to your bed around 11PM at the earliest, so waking up at 3-4AM to catch a 6AM flight might not be all that attractive. Unless you have very good reasons to leave early, book a late morning-noon time flight.

As for the ticket, I agree with d3vski to have AA add your domestic flight (Kingfisher or Jet Airways) into your international PNR. Takes care of many real and potential problems.

Another tip - The word is, also thanks to d3vski, that if you visit AA desk at the airport and purchase Kingfisher flights from them, the price is much lower than what you can get any other way. Don't express too much delight or surprise when that happens, just quietly pay and walk away. This does not work on phone, you'll have to visit O'Hare T3. Also, such discrepancies in their system may have been fixed by now, but there is only one way to find out.

Thats the plan. Stay over 1 night - maybe visit Agra and then fly onwards to BOM.

Thanks will try out the ticket desk at STL this week.