Thread by @sayshaina

I ended up paying @airindiain well over 25k INR for one side DEL-BLR for a flight I had originally booked for around 13k INR because of the chaos at Delhi Airport at T3.
Here's what happened:

Delhi Airport's jammed with a lot of rush due to holiday season because of which I'd highly recommend reaching much earlier for your domestic or international flight.

I had a 7:30am flight through Air India for which I had reached the check-in counter with my baggage by 6:22, over an hour before the closing time.

As per Air India's policy, there's only a small 30 minute window in which one can successfully check-in their luggage.

There was an Air India staff member at the entry line who was stopping everyone and very slowly asking everyone one by one about their flights which caused me to wait at the entry of the line for over 10 minutes.

When my turn came, she told me I'm late and now I'll have to book another flight. I couldn't believe it. I was actually on time, it was 6:32am, and the whole delay happened while I was standing in front of her as she refused to let people through even if they requested her.

I was sent to the supervisor alongside 10-15 other passengers from my flight who were unnecessarily stopped, and we were told that we "should've come 4 hours earlier if we wanted to catch this flight."

Having no other option, I requested for another flight at the reservation desk where they only gave me an option to book a flight for the next day at an additional cost. They also added a penalty of nearly 4k extra on top of it.

I saw all the multiple reservation counters of Air India completely full of people for hours while the single counters at other airlines seemed to have a few people at best.

I could also see utter chaos at security checking at T3, people were shouting at each other and there seemed to be no proper crowd control.

Best of luck to everyone traveling to and fro Delhi airport, please do leave highly prepared.
@airindiain @DelhiAirport
#T3 #AirIndia #DelhiAirport

Edit : Just opened the thread to see an overwhelming response. I appreciate the support so much! Want to clarify - I did reach the airport much earlier, and the time I'm talking about is at the check-in counter, where I did officially reach before time, even if it was short.

Imagine losing your flight despite of not actually crossing the closing time and ending up paying over 25k in total.

Thanks everyone, let's hope the conversations from this thread encourages passengers to plan better and airlines to be considerate about pushing people towards such high amounts. :)