Folks --

I've never been to India, sadly, but a friend is ogoing out there and making domestic reservations. He's pondering whether Air Deccan and Go Air are reliable, or whether to fork over more for Jet/Kingfisher.

Any advice?

I just came back from a trip to India and flew DN. Before booking I was aware of their notorious reputation for being late. However just before booking I noted an ad that said that the punctuality was improving and was 98.7% for Oct. I believed and made the booking only to regret. After I landed in india and told my folks I was flying DN they laughed and told me to buy a cell and watch for constant SMS's regarding "re-scheduling". My flight was delayed by 2 hours. Another relative said that the ad was based on flight times using the "rescheduled" timings and not the original time. I just can't believe authorities could allow such false advertising.

My 2cents: if your point of entry is BOM and looking to fly to your main destination it would be safe to book a DN flight from BOM - destination, but for your return assuming you are flying out of BOM the same day, fork over the extra and fly a more dependable airline so that you don't miss your connection. Delays of 5-6 hours are quite possible.

One thing that always works - make sure your domestic travel is on the early-morning flights as much as possible. Those are almost always on time, barring weather delays.

Winter weather delays are typically related to fog, and quite common in North Indian airports.

With afternoon and evening flights, you will be invariably delayed. I was in India for 3 weeks in Oct and did around 10 domestic flights. First hand experience with this.

Air Deccan is definitely good, reliable and cheap, as far as airlines go. They have BoB meals, and their offerings are limited and unappetizing. Make sure you plan for that.

No experience with Go air, but they would probably be the same.

Yeah I guess if you are on a morning flight that is the first flight for that particular flight then you may be ok. Finding that out could be tough.

Yeah I guess if you are on a morning flight that is the first flight for that particular flight then you may be ok. Finding that out could be tough.

My Air Deccan flights have not ben much worse delay-wise than my other flights within India at the same time of day/year. Maybe I'm just getting lucky, but so far I'm not booking away from Air Deccan for that reason. I definitely prefer Jet Airways and Kingfisher but Air Deccan is not a horrible customer value proposition generally.