Tips on How to Handle Flight Cancellations

No matter how careful you have been in planning, it’s true that travel plans may be thrown into disarray anytime for many reasons. Imagine having painstakingly booked deals on cheap flights to India, you thought that you made fool proof plans for your holiday break but suddenly an airport announcement of flight cancellation due to bad weather threatens your tour. What can you do to mitigate the loss, inconvenience and stress?

Contact the Airline or Travel Agent

Call who ever you booked with – the airline or the travel agent. Ask for your rights and understand policies of the airline for such incidents and the terms and conditions of the booking related to changes and refunds. Airlines usually come up with two options – rebooking the tickets on alternative flight at a later time without any penalties, or full refund. Enquire what your options are. When flight schedules are affected by days rather than hours, then travellers are more likely to get full refunds on tickets that they booked on cheap flights to India.

Intimate the Hotel

Holiday makers must inform the booked hotel about the cancellation of their flight. Else the hotel will not refund the deposited reservation fee. Calmly explain them that your cheap flight to India has been cancelled due to severe weather and you won’t be able to make it. It may spare you from cancellation fees. If you have booked the package holiday with travel agent, then your travel agent should do this. But do not assume, enquire if they have already or are going to do it.

Keep eyes on Departure and Arrival Screens

Make sure to check the departure and arrival screens at the airport for keeping eyes on flights which are operating after yours. It helps in getting proper information about the next operating flights to India.

Rebook the Ticket

It is advisable to get the ticket on your flight to India rebooked while the airlines are offering it as an alternative. If you have booked with the travel agent and you opt for a refund, the airlines are going to advise you to contact your travel agents for refund. Travel agents usually take a long time to refund money, especially if there are thousands of refunds during such natural calamities as the recent snow crisis in the UK and the Iceland volcanic eruption.

Reference: http://journeytoincredibleindia.blogspot.com/2012/04/tips-on-how-to-handle-flight.html

Most Popular Airport in India

The Indian capital Delhi has won its spurs with its international airport ‘IGI Airport’ emerging as a bigger Indian air travel hub leaving the Indian financial capital Mumbai behind. According to the latest reports, the Delhi Airport has superseded Mumbai Airport as the busiest in India.

The air travel traffic movement figures clearly show that Mumbai airport, which maintained the status of being the busiest airport since 2006-08 has now reached to a point of saturation because of the shortage of space and postponement in constructing a second airport.

Both Delhi and Mumbai have been the preferred choice of international travellers who book cheap flights to India for their holidays with numerous full service and cheap airlines serving them. However, the severe space crunch at Mumbai Airport and the resulting limited infrastructure is being seen as the major cause for it to lag behind in passenger traffic.

Another major reason for decline in passengers booking tickets for flights to India and landing at Mumbai airport is that the airport has cross-runways, which make simultaneous flight functioning unachievable. This obviously has restricted Mumbai airport’s flight handling capacity. Delhi’s parallel runways can handle simultaneous flights operation which means more flights to India landing and taking off from here.

The analysts believe that in the coming times, when Mumbai airport will reach the mark of 40-million-passenger traffic, it will be locked. The neighbouring Navi Mumbai airport is expected to get active by 2017 only and is Mumbai's only ray of hope to reclaim its lost status and traveller’s attention when they book cheap flights to India. Till that time Mumbai airport is a closed airport, as experts believe.

Kapil Kaul, CEO, sub-continent and West Asia says that the government will have to speed up the clearances for Navi Mumbai Airport or else evaluating Mumbai and Delhi will be like “comparing cheese and chalk”.

Reference