Kingfisher shares the lounge with a restaurant in the basement. I think this opens in the morning but you should be able to go and lie down in there.

If it were me in your situation I would go to one of the two 5*'s near by and order a coffe in one of their nice lounging chairs ;) will be safer and you will get some decent sleep.

Yeah I have that as an option. I'll decide when I get there. Thanks for the info.

Great idea - lallyr means the hotels nearby, just in case nobody understood! ;)

Don't they fly out of the IC terminal at DEL? Then the lounge is to the left of the check-in counters, if they share the IC lounge....

Any suggestions for a Dom-Int'l connection?
 

A new question...

I will be flying out of DEL at 02:30am on Austrian in biz class. And I have a lunch/afternoon event in Kolkata the previous day, that I really don't want to miss too much of

Assuming I'm flying CCU-DEL on a "full service" carrier, I have a choice of:
-- Indian Airlines, arriving DEL at 22:00
-- Jet Airways, arriving DEL at 23:05
-- Kingfisher, arriving DEL at 23:10

Which one should I go for?! What risk of (fog?) delays given that it will be late Jan?

How difficult is the connection in DEL? I see some suggestions above that 3 hours is an absolute minimum... Combined with the "notorious winter fog delays" and general end-of-the-day delay risk, it sounds like I should be taking an earlier flight. Any thoughts?

Final question. I'm happy to shell out for a taxi transfer from dom to intl terminals, but will there be a ready supply of taxis at 11pm? Otherwise, if I get out of the secure area, presumably I can't then change my mind and take the bus (which is, I assume, free?)

I trust Jet, but kingfisher is not bad either. check for the operations the
day before and on that day before you head to the airport.

better if you can take an early flight, but if not keep in mind the
transfer shuttle buses run on-the-hour every hour.


I think you have enough time to do the bus transfer. The bus runs every hour on the hour IIRC and takes about 25-30 minutes.. and its free.

The traffic should not be too bad at that hour if you must do taxi. Just
pick up the pre-paid taxi before you get out of the terminal/secure area.
I think its less than 200Rs for pre-paid.
Taxi should take 30-40 minutes. (I've done the taxi route intl-> dom in 10 minutes, but I do not recommend that)

Check all your flight options on www.flightstats.com - you can see the flights' statistics if you sign up for an account, under "extended details".

I finished my arduous journey and can now report and correct some of the points here. First of all, you can easily sleep on the chairs at the domestic airport in DEL. There are no armrests. I'm speaking of the main lobby before check in since check in doesn't open til 4:30am.

Secondly, Kingfisher (IT) has a shared lounge to the right (when walking in the front door. The sign says it opens at 5:30, but it opened at 5am. They have a WiFi hotspot, but the Internet connection was down and only could connect to flykingfisher.com.

My LX flight came in an hour and a half late. Plus IT screwed up my ticket. After dealing with all that and taking a taxi to the domestic terminal, I only had to sit around for a couple of hours before the lounge opened. There is a cafe open 24hours and I bought a Chicken Tikka sandwich and a Snapple for 238rps. Then I watched some TV on my laptop. It really wasn't that arduous after all, but I was extremely tired by the time I got to BOM.

IT First class is great. As advertised, a "butler" was with me from check-in to being seated on the plane. He carried on both my bags. Beyond the ticket snafu, the whole experience was great. My only other complaint was they feed you far too much great food on board.

Someone else I know made the same comment about food and then asked a follow-up question about whether or not food was an instrumental part of the Indian flying experience. On the full service carriers, pax generally expect to be fed on the flight, even on short flights like BOM-GOI.

SuperFlyBoy, Kingfisher do fly out of the IC terminal at DEL. It has one of the more functional bathrooms for handicapped persons to be found in all of India's public transport facilities -- there's a story behind that one. ;)

Hopefully this isn't hijacking the thread too much, but right after christmas, I'm looking at doing a MR to DEL on AA 292 and 293. Unfortunately, the only date the fare works means I have to turn right back around in order to get home in time for an obligation I have back in NYC. AA 292 is scheduled to arrive in DEL at 9:35pm, and 293 is scheduled to leave at 12:55am.

Is three hours enough time to get through customs, go back through security, and get back on the plane in time? I did do a bunch of forum searches, but there seems to be conflicting information about whether you need to go through customs or not. Some people describe going through a "transit" area in lieu of customs, aided by the airline folks (with the caveat they need to go get you your boarding pass) if you are connecting to an onward flight. Is this still true?

I'm just concerned that I'll have to go through customs, and go back through security, and not get on my return flight, which puts me completely out of luck for making my obligation in NYC. Any advice would be appreciated.

You absolutely will have to go out and come back in again. But it won't take very long. Less than an hour. If you try to go to the transit lounge, they will push you through immigration. I guess if you have a BP for the outbound flight you can try to gangster your way through, but otherwise you have to immigrate and then check in for your return.

I am guessing that you won't have any checked in luggage? Then it should take you 30-45 mins max to get out of the airport. Then its just a simple 1 min walk upstairs and back into departures. If you do have checked in luggage then add ateast 30-45 mins.

More then enough time if you come without luggage, with and you are taking a chance!

The only way that they will let you back into the transit area is if you have a boarding card which I don't know if you can get from NY or not?

Just out of curiousity are you doing this MR in C or Y?

Thanks lallyr, and stimpy, for the confirmation i should be fine. I'm definitely not bringing any luggage I can't carry with me - laptop, new t-shirt, breath mints, more DVDs than I can count, etc. etc. My forum searches indicated there's no place for me to grab a shower as a oneworld sapphire - I don't suppose that's changed?

I'm currently confirmed in C on DEL-ORD, waitlisted on ORD-DEL. The flight is currently Y5 and 0s across the board in coach, while it's J7 with a wide-open seatmap, so I'm hoping there's not a lot of business travelers with status waiting for ugprades. It's a refundable fare, so if ORD-DEL doesn't clear, I'll think long and hard about whether I want to fly, as 14 hours in very full coach is my personal idea of hell.

Thanks,
matt

3 hours is def enough time
 

Given the time in between flights and no luggage to check, this should be easily doable. In case of delays to inbound flight, i would suggest asking the purser to send a message to ground staff informing them to not cancel/bump you.

Might also be a good idea to have someone check you into the return flight so that your seat is safe -- as long as you have a copy of the itinerary, that is all you need to enter the departure area of the airport

Good idea! Never thought of that.

I have a question and I think this is the right thread to ask it. I'm going to India for 4 months and in this period I will probably travel some distances by airplane. One of these journeys will be from Goa to Varanasi. To do so, I allready tried to find out what the best possible way to do this is.
According to what I found out, I think this is the cheapest and fastest way:
From Goa to Delhi with Go Air, arrives at 10.10 AM, From Delhi to Varanasi with Spicejet leaves at 02.30 PM (I'll probably do this on the 20th of februari)

My question is basically if this is possible. I don't know al that much about the needed time etc.(I don't fly that often and I never really arranged these things myself). I guess I just wanna know if this is a good plan, if I'll have enough time for the connection, how it will work with my bags (how heavy these can be), if these airlines are acceptable and if I can easily pay the tickets. From what I read here, it's not easy to pay a Go Air ticket with an international creditcard. I will buy the tickets in India (also because the date might alter), so perhaps I shouldn't try to buy them online?

I hope I made myself clear enough and I really hope you can help me with this.

Thanks!
kim