Gujarat Fliers Can Now Skip the Worst Part of Delhi

Air India has added Ahmedabad to its Easy Connect network, and the change is more meaningful than the branding suggests. Two daily Ahmedabad to Delhi flights now carry the designation: AI1121, departing at 20:15 and landing at 22:00, effective 1 September, and AI1117, departing at 08:25 and arriving at 10:15, effective 2 September. Passengers booked through to an international destination check their bags once, in Ahmedabad, and clear immigration there rather than in Delhi. Ahmedabad becomes the third spoke in the network after Amritsar and Varanasi.

What that removes is the specific misery of an Indian domestic-to-international transfer. Under the old arrangement a passenger flying from a regional city to Europe or North America landed at Delhi’s domestic terminal, collected their bags, exited, moved to Terminal 3, queued again to check in, queued again for immigration, and queued again for security — a sequence that routinely consumed three hours and turned a missed connection into an overnight. Easy Connect passengers transfer airside without re-checking baggage or changing terminals, and their luggage is tagged straight through to the final destination.

The network reach is the other half of the story. Air India says the two flights offer onward connections to 26 international destinations within four hours of arrival in Delhi, spanning the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, the Asia-Pacific, Southeast Asia and the Gulf. Gujarat is one of India’s largest sources of outbound long-haul traffic, with an enormous diaspora in North America and East Africa, and until now most of that traffic has either endured the Delhi shuffle or routed through a Gulf hub on a foreign carrier.

The catch is that the benefit only exists on a single ticket. A separately booked domestic flight into Delhi followed by a separately booked international departure gets none of this, no matter which airline flies it, because the through-check and airside transfer depend on one booking reference. Anyone flying out of Ahmedabad long-haul should now price the whole journey as one Air India itinerary before assuming a self-connection is cheaper — the fare gap has to be substantial to be worth three extra hours and the risk of eating the cost of a missed flight.

Sources: Air India Newsroom, Travel Trade Journal