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From: jis1@ahuta.UUCP (j.mukerji)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: re: Recent fare to India
Message-ID: <440@ahuta.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 10-Feb-85 13:13:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ahuta.440
Posted: Sun Feb 10 13:13:32 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Feb-85 05:57:08 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Lines: 42


I travelled by SAS from New York to Calcutta via Copenhagen and back,
including a one night stopover at Copenhagen on the way back, payed for by
SAS. The fare was $1100 round-trip. I have heard rumors that the flight to
Calcutta from Copenhagen has been replaced by a flight to Delhi since then.

Yes, International travel from Airports in India are a pain in general. Too
many lines, and too long waits. I try to arrive in India and depart from
India through one of the lesser travelled international airports. The choices
as they stand now are: Calcutta, Madras, Trivandrum and Amritsar. The delays
in lines are considerably less at these airports. However, you do have to
spend some time researching low fares to these airports.

I did research some before going to India late last year. My first surprise
was that Air-India is nowhere near the least expensive way of getting to
India anymore. In particular, I researched going to Calcutta, and besides
the SAS deal, which I took, I found three others. They are:

1) New York to Amsterdam by your favourite discount trans-atlantic and then
Bangladesh Biman from there to Calcutta via Dacca. I am told that their
service is pretty reasonable. The fare at that time worked out to about
$1000.

2) New York to Copenhagen or Luxembourg by your favourite discount
trans-atlantic, and then Aeroflot from there to Calcutta via Moscow. Again
the fare worked out to about $1000+. 

3) New York to Copenhagen via SAS and then Thai from there to Calcutta via
Bangkok. Same fare as SAS all the way to Calcutta, but takes more time.

I chose the SAS deal because it was the most attractive when fare, timings
and other conveniences were concerned. If I were really pinching for the
last penny, I would have taken the discount-trans-atlantic/Bangladesh-Biman
deal.

Fares, specially trans-atlantic fares change so frequently these days that
nothing that I have mentioned may hold good any more!

Jishnu Mukerji
AT&T Information Systems Labs.
Holmdel NJ