r2i forum

Hello all,

I am planning to travel to India on a vacation with a family (Two adults and one 3 years baby). What are the best options for me to buy tickets, would be traveling from Chicago.

Requirements:

1. Should be able to make a change in the return date
2. Spacious flight with enough leg room
3. Indian food
4. Lowest fare

Options:

1. Buy tickets online from Priceline, Orbitz or expedia
2. Buy tickets from Yatra.com or Makemytrip.com
3. Buy tickets from Desi agents in US
4. Buy tickets from India

What flights to choose if have the following options:

1. AA
2. BA
3. AI
4. Continental
5. Lufthansa

Any reviews for Yatra.com?

Appreciate any responses, and thank you for reading my post.

>>Desi by Heart<<

Try Orbitz and Expedia. I took my last two trips (Dec 06 and 07) to India by buying online through orbitz and expedia, respectively and the deals available at these websites ($1100-1200 all inclusive) were the most inexpensive tickets that I could avail. These tickets were on US Airways and Delta and none of the Desi agents or websites could beat them on the price. You can also try globe-travels.com, a SIFY business and at times they have got good deals.

Good Luck with your search.

D

I have been using www.4lowfare.com decent prices, and decent service. BTW, the taxes on tickets are crazy. I felt, last year it was not this bad.

Get the local desi magazine and call travel agents in Chicago (lots of them on Devon Street). We flew Air India non-stop to India from JFK last time and they were pretty good. Food was the best among all past flights between US and India (NWA, Delta, Air France, Lufthansa). They even served good bhel puri. Seats were comfortable with great leg room. Every seat had an LCD monitor with a great selection of movies and tv serials. The AI ground staff at JFK airport were a bit rude but otherwise the flight was most comfortable.
http://home.airindia.in/SBCMS/WebPages/Home.aspx

Try
Makemytrip.com
desiya.com
kayak.com

Thank you for the responses.

Would I be allowed to make one change in the return date after I buy tickets from Expedia/Orbitz/Priceline?

Thanks,
-TD

Try www.sidestep.com it searches most travel websites such as orbitz etc. simultaneously and gives you the lowest price.

I have bought tickets directly from the Airlines website for US-India about 10 times so far (Delta, KLM/NW, Cathay, AA, Lufthansa, BA etc.) and have found them to be cheaper then any travel search sites or desi agents at the time of my purchase. If you do advanced search on AA and let it choose between 'ALL carriers' you get a much cheaper price then advertised by most travel websites.

I am of the opinion that there isn't much to choose from in terms of 'class of service' and even food to a large extent in economy class between various airlines. What matters is the type of aircraft that you get for a particular segment from a particular airline (for ex: you get new A330 on NW for transatlantic with AVOD, laptop power etc. in economy but still get old aircrafts for transpacific flights for the same airline, you still get the overhead monitors for IFE on Lufthansa and some Air-India flights, Delta has the new 777-200 LR on the JFK-BOM route etc.) The aircraft type can mean a lot of difference in seat-pitch, in-flight entertainment etc. even for the same airline.

After you find the type of aircraft specified for your segment (usually on the airline website), go to www.seatguru.com to find out what kind of features your aircraft has for a particular airline. I find that AVOD (audio video on demand) makes a world of a difference on long haul flights.

Hope this helps.

Has anyone present in US booked tickets to India and arranged payment be made in Indian rupees? I have some money in my NRO account which is not earning interest to cover inflation and I plan to use money from that to pay the air tickets. Maybe, I should call Indian travel agents but I don't know how I can pay since I do not carry Indian credit card.

try Indian travel agents, and transfer the money to them.

VS007;665673try Indian travel agents, and transfer the money to them.

Yes, but how do you transfer money from NRO account to travel agent. Has anybody bought tickets from agent in India?