Team-BHP - The Air Travel & Airports Discussion Thread

Guys I will traveling back to India next week and on Detroit-Chicago-New Delhi-Amritsar route via Delta for US domestic and Air India from Chicago till ASR.

I guess charges for overweight baggage is $100 till 32kg and $200 for that extra 3rd piece. This much is very clear here. This will be charged by Air India I guess. But what I want to know is that do I have to pay money to Delta as well from Detroit to Chicago?

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Originally Posted by rsjaurr (Post 3358361)

It all depends on how you bought the ticket. If it is one ticket, most probably not. But if you bought separate tickets for domestic and international flights, then for sure, you will have to pay for excess weight.
In any case, you are better off with checking Delta prior to your flight.

If Detroit-Chicago-New Delhi-Amritsar is a single ticket, then you won't have to pay excess baggage.

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Originally Posted by rsjaurr (Post 3358361)

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Originally Posted by infotech58 (Post 3359418)

If Detroit-Chicago-New Delhi-Amritsar is a single ticket, then you won't have to pay excess baggage.

If you mean that Det-Chi is just connecting flight then yes its one ticket. Anyway it all depends till where I get boarding passes. If I get passes till Delhi then I guess I will have to pay again to AI knowing how they behave.

I will be calling both DL and AI tomorrow as I did not get time to call them today.

Please also tell the checkin staff that you are on an international flight and if the connecting flights are not more than 24 hours apart they normally give you the benefit of international baggage rules. May not apply for low cost airlines, but I have found them helpful in the past. You will have to show your connecting flight tickets to the supervisor though.

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Originally Posted by Nitrous Power (Post 3358295)

Something I experienced last week while traveling back to Washington DC from Ahmedabad. This time I was traveling with Etihad Airlines via Abu Dhabi. I got a surprise when I landed at Abu Dhabi. The Customs and Immigration of USA was done at Abu Dhabi airport for all passengers flying to Washington DC and Chicago. So when I landed at IAD, it was just like a domestic landing and walked directly to baggage belt and walked out. IMO, this is good because it saves time that has to be spent on immigration lines upon arrival after a long 14 hours tiring flight.

I think this is the pilot program that they just started a week ago.

Yes nitrous, you can now clear US immigrations and customs at Abu Dhabi airport directly, it saves a lot of time and is much faster. Here's a link I found that I had read about on the khaleej times website.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/kt-artic...=nationgeneral

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Originally Posted by Nitrous Power (Post 3358295)

The Customs and Immigration of USA was done at Abu Dhabi airport for all passengers flying to Washington DC and Chicago. So when I landed at IAD, it was just like a domestic landing and walked directly to baggage belt and walked out.

I think this is the pilot program that they just started a week ago.

This is called US Border Pre-Clearance and has been around for a while now. I have seen it in Montreal and Shannon back in 2005 when I used to travel through those airports.

I think Abu Dhabi is the first outside Americas/Europe, though.

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Originally Posted by Wheeliej (Post 3360374)

Yes, I also faced pre clearance at London airport prior to boarding a New York flight. But had to queue up again at Customs at New York also. Not sure what this achieves.

That's not pre-clearance, since none of the London airports are listed among the pre-clearance locations:

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/toolbox/c..._locations.xml

You probably just went through some sort of local security check.

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Originally Posted by binand (Post 3360415)

They put a little US customs sticker on the passport after asking regular immigration questions. This was a small desk before the checkin counter where they checked the boarding pass.

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Originally Posted by Nitrous Power (Post 3358295)

The Customs and Immigration of USA was done at Abu Dhabi airport for all passengers flying to Washington DC and Chicago.

@Nitrous, thanks for sharing this. My parents are traveling to DC next month, by Etihad, so this piece of information is very useful.

PS. I could not find the 'Thanks' button under this post...

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Originally Posted by Wheeliej (Post 3360425)

They put a little US customs sticker on the passport after asking regular immigration questions. This was a small desk before the checkin counter where they checked the boarding pass.

That's not the pre-clearance. If it was pre-clearance, you would have your passport stamped there only and not at JFK.