It was August 4th, 2020: The day I flew back to India (this time for real, and not just for a visit). I was happy I was finally going to be back and would be with my husband and family, but up until my flight took off all I could think of were the 7 splendid years in the US, thinking about how I made my friends my family and how much I’ll miss them, my personal growth over the years, lots and lots of memories. But traveling in these tough situations had clouded my feelings as all I could think of was not touching my face and be extra alert of every single thing around me in terms of sanitization.

I chose the song Stayin Alive by Bees Gees for this post because of the obvious, but hope you all take it with a pinch of salt, and enjoy it while reading this post!

My trip to India from the USA was nothing but an adventure, and I had mentally prepared myself to travel in a completely alert situation which might not be a comfortable journey, but as we all know it’s better to be prepared for the worst. I am going to try describing every single bit of information of my travel experience from Newark (EWR), USA to Mumbai (MUM), India by one of the VBM flights organized by Air India on August 4th, 2020 which is a 14.5 hour flight, and I hope this helps everyone who’d be going through the same.

This is going to be very long post, so PLEASE STICK around as I didn’t want to miss out on any details which might be helpful. I’ll be writing about my quarantine experience in my next post.

Airline booking experience

I had to book my Air India VBM flight mid July, as soon as they opened up flying dates August onwards (Phase 4). Note that when VBM flights started operating, they only opened up a smaller time frame of flights which could be booked so one had to wait for a certain date for new time frames to open up for booking in advance.

I did try booking a Lufthansa flight as I had miles I could use for a business class air ticket (thanks to all those years in consulting!), but due to international flight restrictions in India, this booking got cancelled on multiple occasions. So, I started looking into traveling by United, but it had a 12-hour layover in Delhi and there was a possibility of quarantine in Delhi, which is why Air India was the best option for me as my port of entry into India would be Mumbai. The biggest plus for me traveling by Air India was it being a direct flight which meant not having a layover.

Important links to help you with booking:

You could book your Air India flight via the below link: https://bookme.airindia.in

You would need to register via the following forms before you fly:

Flying day experience

I am sure you are going to be anxious before flying, because of the obvious pandemic in the world right now. I was too, but I was told by many and I kept telling myself all I can do is just stay calm, not panic, and remember to just be aware of sanitation of your personal space.

Essentials to carry:

• 1. Couple of masks (I would suggest N95, a face shield will be provided to you in the flight)
• 2. Hand Sanitizer
• 3. Disinfecting wipes
• 4. Pen/(s) (You’ll need one to fill forms through your journey)
• 5. A book or a sturdy bag which you can use as a support while filling forms
• 6. A travel blanket or a jacket to keep yourself warm
• 7. Easy to carry and eat hot meal (will describe why in detail later)
• 8. Loads of downloaded movies, series, podcasts, music or books which’ll keep you occupied on the flight.

Details on my journey:

• – Please make sure you arrive at least 4.5 hours before the flight time at the airport. Check-in now begins 4 hours before the flight time, and there are a couple of formalities to be completed before you get to the check-in counter. Once you arrive at the airport, due to the current situation, the queue begins outside the airport building until the check-in counter opens up.

• – Please be mindful of the distance between you and other fellow passengers around you throughout the journey. This was getting a bit annoying to me as some passengers weren’t maintaining a safe distance.

• – While you are waiting to get to the check-in counter, you’ll be provided a form by an Air India employee with some details to be filled in. It’s a pretty straightforward form with details you don’t have to fret about. You’ll also have your temperature checked and your passport collected and number noted before you get to the check-in counter.

• – The process at the check-in counter is nothing different than on a normal day. Please note that they are pretty strict on your baggage weight restrictions, and they do charge you extra if your bags are overweight even by a bit. So pack perfectly! They let you carry a 8 kg carry on bag, laptop bag/personal bag to carry on and 2 check-in bags 23 kg each.

• – Post check-in, you’d have to go through security, which is again nothing different from a normal day. Going through security was honestly a breeze.

• – Post security, you’ll directly get to your gate where you’d have to wait until your boarding time. Please note that Airport Lounges aren’t open on Terminal B, but there is a small cafe which is open where you could pick up something to eat.

• – Now that you have ample of time to wait before you take off, I would suggest you to download the Aarogya Setu app and register on your Indian Phone number or any one of your family’s Indian phone number. Remember you’ll need to put in an OTP when you register hence make sure you can get in touch with whoever will be providing you your OTP from India.

• – Once you board your flight and get to your seat, you’ll notice your seat is occupied with 3 meal packages, a face shield, a couple of hand sanitizer pouches, and water bottles. This causes a bit of a space inconvenience during take off and landing, but during the rest of the flight you could be relaxed even when you keep it below your seat.

• – If you’ve booked a middle seat, you’d be given a complete PPE kit to be worn through the flight. I had booked an extra space window seat, and was fortunate to have my row middle seat unoccupied, so I could put my food trays on the middle seat.

• – Please remember you wouldn’t have any in-flight service, meal service, or refreshment service on the flight. The only meals you will be provided are the ones kept on your seat in advance. These meals aren’t any hot meals: it is a cold sandwich and loads of snacks and a mango juice packet. Most of these snacks (I would say 60% of them are sweet), hence not at all something I would ask anything to rely on for the entire flight journey. Here comes the part where I recommended carrying some of your own food which you could eat easily.

• – The in-flight entertainment doesn’t work, so make sure you download ample of movies, music, podcasts or whatever you like watching, or carry books if you like reading.

• – I used the face shield along with my mask when I went to restrooms, or when I had food. The rest of the time when I was at my seat, all I had was my mask on.

• – The flight doesn’t provide any blanket, hence please carry your own travel blanket or a jacket to keep yourself warm. I usually get very cold on flights so this was a necessity for me. I traveled with the BlueHills Premium Soft Travel Blanket I bought from Amazon and will completely vouch for this one! It’s lightweight which is easy to carry while traveling and kept me warm through the flight.

• – Before landing in India, you’ll be provided another health form to fill, which you’d need to show authorities once you land in India hence please make sure you keep it safely along with your boarding ticket. (keep your boarding ticket till your 14-day quarantine is over)

• – Once you land in India, please do not panic to get your cabin bags from the overhead bins, you’ll have enough time.

• – Once you get out of the aircraft, you’ll be guided to a point where they scan the health form you filled on your flight and give you a copy of the same.

• – Next, they’ll measure your temperature through a scanner and fill in your temperature details.

• – Now comes the tricky and the most annoying part of the journey for the registration on the Aarogya Setu App which is the Indian Govt app to track your health and to let you know if people around you have been impacted by Covid-19. You cannot get to the immigration and baggage pick-up until you get past this checkpoint. You’ll be asked to download the app or asked if you’ve downloaded the app and registered yourself. Note to people traveling with international roaming : I couldn’t register on my international number, hence I had to register using my husband’s Indian phone number and ask him to provide me an OTP by calling him on WhatsApp. This took half an hour to coordinate. The airport authorities will help you connect to the airport wi-fi, so you could WhatsApp call your relative with an India number to provide an OTP for registration. If you aren’t able to do so, BMC officials will stop by after 30 minutes to help you manually through this process. There are spaced out chairs kept at this point so you could sit and work through these technical difficulties. There were a lot of elderly folks who were stuck at this checkpoint due to technical obstacles and I tried helping whoever I could (of course with safety precautions and asking if they’d be fine with me helping them). That’s the reason I recommended downloading and registering on the app before flying to avoid delays and frustrations once you land in Mumbai.

• – Next you’d go through immigration which is the same process as it’s always been followed by baggage pickup and customs.

• – Please remember that there could be delays in your bags even when others around you have already gotten them, so don’t panic. Remember to first pickup a trolley, before spotting your bags and picking them up from the conveyor belt as you can’t possibly drag your bags everywhere easily without a trolley. I was trying to help some elders to grab their bags from the conveyor belt while waiting for my bags as due to the current situation, you wouldn’t see a lot of officials around to help you.

• – Post picking up your baggage and customs, you’d go to the counter for 7-day hotel quarantine reservations (this process was before the new rule passed on 8th August for an option for 14 days home quarantine if you got tested prior to flying). There are separate queues depending on your home location: Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Out of Maharashtra etc. You’ll be guided to the right queue depending on your home address where they’d ask you to make a booking in the list of hotels pre-approved by the MGCM.

• – I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND one to pre-book your hotel room in the list of approved quarantine hotels (https://www.csmia.aero/passenger/quarantine-hotels.aspx). They all have subsidized rates, so you could pay for a night for reservation, so they could keep a room for you as most of these hotels get pretty much sold out by the time you reach the queue, and you wouldn’t want to wait at the airport trying to book rooms at hotels available after an exhausting journey you already had.

• – My husband had already booked a Taj Colaba room for me in advance for quarantine, so I waited in the Mumbai queue, and let them know I have already booked a hotel. They quickly noted my reservation number and sent me to the next stage of transportation.

• – Transportation is provided by the authorities through BMC buses, but you do have options to book private buses on the spot. My husband had again booked an airport pickup organized by the Taj so this was a very smooth process for me. I would recommend you to also book an airport pickup from your hotel as it becomes a seamless and a less tiring process. Please make sure you ONLY arrange hotel pickup vehicles as these need to be preregistered with the airport authorities as they keep a list of cars coming to the airport.

Good luck for those of you traveling! My next blog post would be about my quarantine experience, but if you do have any questions or any comments on my journey experience, feel free to reach out to me! 🙂

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