Flying in India

A person that travels frequently gets very used to the procedure one has to follow to travel with a plane. For those that are not, normal air travel begins with arriving to the airport an hour and a half before the flight, getting a boarding pass, going through a security check, a passport control if the flight is international, and boarding the plane. This works in 99% of the airports. India, however, is a whole new world. I suspected something fishy already when the plane ticket said you should be at the airport four hours before the flight. In any other country, check in counters would still be closed at that time. So let's take a closer look at how the Indian airport operates, in this case a flight with IndiGo from Imphal to Delhi:

You arrive at the airport many hours before the flight. Even before going out of your ground transport which takes you to the airport, there will be a security check that won't really check anything except for a quick peek inside the vehicle. If you then want to enter the airport, you better have your ticket printed out. That's also the only country where you really should have all your tickets printed out since you cannot even enter the airport without it. A security person will check your ticket and your passport and quite possibly ask you questions about the travel which would normally only be asked by an immigration officer. If you pass this test, you can advance a few steps further, where there will be a screening of everything you have with you. At some airports, you have to point out the luggage that will be checked in and the luggage that will be your carry-on. Then the security will completely seal the luggage to be checked in, so you better not count on rearranging anything by the check in counter. After those few checks you can actually go to the check in counter to get a boarding pass. However, the airline ground staff is no good at finding your tickets, you better show them a print out again. Even better, some airlines will require you to show them a credit card with which the ticket was purchased. If you travel on a visa, you may even be asked to show them the documents needed to obtain it, e.g. an invitation letter. After some nuisance you get a boarding pass, which means you can find the gates and rest until the boarding starts. To go through the regular security is then no easy task. First, one person will check your boarding pass, passport, and a tag on each of your hand baggages. It better all be empty and non stamped, if it is stamped, you're in trouble. If you transferred from another flight, your hand baggage tags will have a stamp already, to which the security gets extremely confused and makes you tear it off and get another one back at the check in counter. I dare not think of what would happen if after security, you go out of the airport and want to go back in, with a boarding pass already stamped. Anyway, after this empty stamp check, you earn the right to have yourself and your hand baggage screened. Hand baggage screening will be very hard if you have a laptop bag, since they get very confused if they see cables inside. So in addition to taking out your laptop, you will also need to take out any cables, and basically the best idea is to just take out everything connected to electronics. Then you can walk through the security gates, women and men separately, since everyone has to be manually checked no matter if the gates beeped or not. Touching women is a delicate issue in India and they always have to be not only apart from men, but also in a specially designated room during those checks so that nobody can peek in. I wonder what happens in there. Anyway, after the body check, you get a stamp on your boarding pass and a stamp on tags of each of your hand baggages. If you still have any time left, which you probably don't, you can then finally rest a bit. You might think that the checking is over, but when the boarding time approaches, the most useless checks have not even yet begun. First there will be a person checking your boarding pass and passport, then a person right next to the first one will check your boarding pass for the stamp, then there will be another person checking baggage tags for a stamp. After that, there will be another check of baggage tags for stamps and those tags will get another stamp. Then another body check, men on one side and women in a special mysterious room again. After that, another person will check for a boarding pass, its stamp and two stamps on each baggage tag. Then you get to board the plane, but before the plane gate, there will be two more persons doing exactly the same thing once more, checking all the stamps and the boarding pass. Then you get on the plane, where you usually have to show the boarding pass to a flight attendant, which will point you to the direction of your seat. If you have an aisle or a window seat and were among the last to board the plane, you will most likely see your seat already taken. Arguing about which seat is yours is of no use, it's better to just figure out which seat belonged to the person that sits wrong and go there. If you successfully made it thus far, you should probably get some hard liquour during the flight, since that's the time you don't have to worry about anything. That is of course, if you trust the Indian pilots to take the plane to the destination safely. When the plane lands and if you're still in India, you will have to show the boarding pass again, so you better not lose it during flying.

Here is a list of checks where checks in bold are the ones that are normal at all other airports:

• Vehicle check
• Airport entry check of a ticket and passport
• Airport entry security screening
• Check in baggage sealing
• Check in
• Passport and boarding pass check
• Empty stamp check
• Hand baggage screening
• Walking through the security gate
• Manual body check (also at regular airports if the secuirty gate beeps)
• Stamping of boarding pass
• Stamping of hand baggage tags
• Boarding the plane
• Boarding pass stamp check
• Hand baggage tags stamp check
• Stamping hand baggage tags again
• Manual body check
• Boarding pass and stamp check
• Boarding pass and stamp check

I don't know what the reason is for so many checks, especially since most of those checks are just checking whether you have the right stamps. Maybe it's to pass time before the flight, maybe it's to employ more people, I don't know. But one thing I know is that it's no more secure than all the other airports in the world. I dare to say it's even less secure. Security in India focuses on checking the stamps, security everywhere else focuses on what you're actually bringing with you on the plane. In any case, don't worry if you need to be at the airport four hours before the flight, you will not be bored. Take it easy however, stressing over the procedure is useless, as are 75% of their checks.