This section of India flights is mainly meant for those of you who are coming to India from abroad. If you are familiar with the India flights scenario, you may skip this section altogether. The destination of your India flight most probably is one of India’s busiest airports: New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai. These are the popular international gateways to India. Roughly, these airports are located at the north, west, east and south of India. Except the Delhi, all are coastal cities. That makes your job a bit simpler, if you are still scrambling to locate these cities on India’s map.
Thought of mentioning this piece of information about the name of these cities and their airports. The cities are often known by multiple names. Out of these the official names may not sound all that familiar if you are a novice India traveler. A list of the old and new names of the Indian cities are given at the end.
Delhi ( DEL )
Seach for flights to Delhi information ....
Let us start with Delhi, the capital of India. About 50 international flight operators have their India flights operations to Delhi. That means anything from Virgin Atlantic to Cathy Pacific to Ethiopian Airlines flights to India fly to Delhi. Apart from the fellow tourists, your co passengers typically include the Indians living abroad and staffs and family of the diplomatic fraternity based in Delhi. Being the federal capital, Delhi has the maximum concentration of foreign diplomatic missions in India.
Check it out with our country’s popular operator about their India flight schedule and the fares. Anyways there is no dearth of websites offering attractive flight packages to India. A quick homework can fetch you the so-called best bargain flight to India.
Now a bit about the airport in Delhi. The airport in Delhi (DEL) is called Indira Gandhi International Airport (in short IGI Airport), named after the former Prime Minister Ms. Indira Gandhi.
Though it is called international airport the domestic flights to Delhi too operate from the same airport. The terminals for International and domestic India flights are different. Also note that there are multiple domestic terminals. All of these terminals are quite far apart, especially the international terminal from the 2 domestic terminals. You can use the inter terminal coach services, if you need to catch a connecting flight from the other terminal.
The international terminal is roughly at the south side of the runway whereas the domestic terminals are at the northeastern fringe. Reserve a good 45 minutes traveling time between the international and domestic terminals.
In general the taxi operators outside the airport haggle for fare. If you are not used to it go for the prepaid taxi facility. There are prepaid taxi booking counters just before the exit. You can easily notice this, as there would a queue at this counter. You need to tell the area / street name where you wants to go. A printed voucher is given to you against the payment. A typical prepaid taxi fare from the airport to the city center cost you around Rs200 (about USD 5) . Come out of the building and you spot a row of the Delhi Taxis in the typical Black body with green stripe across.
Just before that you have to shove through this hotel agents and those meet & greet people holding the placards. This mob is kept a few feet way from the terminal building, just behind that stainless steel barricade. It typically looks as if a dam is about to burst at is seams. It you are skilled baseball player, it should not be a big problem to wriggle out of this and head straight to the taxi stand.
Catch a taxi from the row and tell the place already printed on the voucher you are having. A cop manning a police booth around the corner takes down your name, destination, taxi driver’s name and the taxi registration number. This is just a routine security exercise and a deterrent to keep the cab drivers in check.
Never hand over your prepaid taxi payment voucher to the driver until you are dropped at your destination. Repeat, never handover this piece of paper to the taxi driver till you’ve reached your destination proper. Also don’t listen to the typical “ That Hotel is closed long back ….”, “ That place got guttered in a fire last week …….!! ” . These are all standard nonsense told to steer you away to a different hotel. They get a commission; you get a worst tariff.
Domestic terminals in Delhi airport are named 1A , 1B and 1C.
Terminal 1A caters to the domestic flights of the state owned Air India flights and the flights of Kingfisher.
The nearby Terminal 1B is used by all the other domestic flights. Terminal 1C is the domestic flight arrival terminal.
The schedules may get changed, but still for the sake of a broad idea, a list of domestic flight from Delhi is added here along with the flight operators. You can always check it up with the respective airline’s websites for better and current flight schedule/ availability.
The airport in Mumbai (Bombay) is called Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
There are separate terminals for domestic and international operations, though they share the same runways for takeoff and landing.
The airports were formerly called Sahar International Airport and Santacruz Domestic Airport. While hiring a cab to the airport, mention specifically as International airport or as the Domestic airport (more popularly Santacruz airport) . They are a well 15 to 20 minutes drive apart, if you ever need to travel between them. The airlines operate curtsey intra-terminal coaches between the domestic and international airports.
Again there are two terminals each at the Domestic and International airports. While 1A and 1B are domestic terminals, 2A and 2C are International terminals.
The domestic India flights of Air India and the private airline Kingfisher operates from 1A. Terminal 1A is located at your right side as you approach the airport by the main road. Just at the final junction as you reach the airport area, a plethora of airports signboards confront you. Look for the Terminal 1A signboard that points to the right. Tell the taxi driver to take the flyover you can spot a few meters to the right side of this junction. If you miss this you will be by default taken to the terminal 1B. In any case you can walk to terminal 1A (10 minutes walk plus a climb to the first floor lugging along all that baggage… ooff! ).
On the other hand, if you want to go to the city center (or to the suburbs), taxis are available just outside the arrival building. The traffic police queues them up just outside of the lobby of the arrival launch. A bit forward, you can find the three-wheeler taxis (Auto-rickshaws). Note that Auto-rickshaws are not permitted to enter certain parts of the Mumbai (they can take you up to Sion and Bandra in South Mumbai). In otherwords Auto-rickshaws are not allowed to enter Mumbai City ( the peninsular part of the city ) . So if your final destination is the city center, catch a taxi rather than the cheaper Auto-rickshaws. Their meters don’t display the fare directly. Instead you need to check with the tiny printed card to arrive at the fare in rupees. Roughly the taxis charge 11 times the meter reading and Auto-rickshaws charge about 7 times. (One more complication you’ve to deal with ! But it is a norm in the city and you can manage it easily the next time you catch a city taxi…. ) . Both of them carry this rate card (the fare adjustment chart).
From airport to the ‘city’ the taxi fare is about Rs250 (some 45 minutes drive….). That is a rough estimate for you to get an idea of the taxi fare scenario. Again that goes about 50% up during the night.
The story is not very much different for the International terminal too. However there is a prepaid taxi counter located inside the arrival area. They charge a bit high compared to the metered rates. But this is reasonable a premium, especially if you are arriving at an odd hour in the night.
Domestic terminal 1B is located at the left as you approach the airport from the main road. A great majority of the private airlines operate their domestic India flights from terminal 1B.
Bellary is the "nearest" airport for Hampi. See the other airports in the region in the following map. Presently Air Deccan operates an ATR type flight to Bellary from Bangalore.
The flight schedule for Bellary-Banglore is given below. Please note that this may change with time. For the authentic & current details please check with AirDeccan .
Old name New name
Bangalore to Bengaluru
Bellary to Ballary
Calicut to Kozhikode
Trivandrum to Thiruvananthapuram
Cochin to Kochi
Poona to Pune
Bombay to Mumbai
Madras to Chennai
Calcutta to Kolkata
(to be countinued.....please check this later )
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