Cheap Airfares to India
Finding cheap airfares to India is not that hard. But finding specialist portals which deal with finding both cheap airfares to India and within India can be trickier. I checked with my friend Kara on what were the best ones for foreigners to use. The reason this is important is that sites which are designed for domestic travel for Indians often don’t accept foreign credit cards. As a long-term Indian resident with an overseas bank account, she encounters this problem regularly. She’s the one who narrowed down the list for me. From the ones she told me about, I've decided to partner with www.yatra.com as it seems to be the most comprehensive (By the way, Yatra translates as ‘Journey’). I think Yatra's best because: 1. It has an Indian, USA and UK portals and possibly more. (There’s a button to press that says ‘Find Yatra near me’ so if you hit that, it should come up with other options based on your computer’s location). 2. It specializes in cheap airfares to India from other places as well as travel within India. This is different from most travel agents and portals which specialize only in flights FROM your home country to anywhere and everywhere. 3. This is by far my favorite feature: it ONLY shows AVAILABLE flights. If, like me, you get completely sick of seeing cheap flights advertised which only seem to exist in theory...well none of that on Yatra, as you can see from the booking engine below. NB:If you are not from the US, just go to:
Yatra:
and then up the top you can click 'Find a Yatra near me' to bring up the options for your area.
4. Listed Prices Include Taxes. When you search for a flight, a range of days will come up with available flights and their actual prices including taxes. None of that annoying ‘flight is only $100 but the taxes are $1000’ nonsense that’s creeping in to other websites I check online (I won’t name them here but I’m sure you’ve found them too). 5. Often overlooked but important to me, the design is clean and generally free from flashy distracting animations. It’s simple to find what you want and easy to refine or change a search (on the left column navigation) without having to enter all your info again. From a design and usability point of view, I’d have to say 10/10. 6. Oh and the really thoughtful element that so many sites don’t put it is that it separates out the direct flights from the indirect ones, meaning you can see at a glance whether the price difference is worth the time, inconvenience (and extra take-off and landing, if you’re like me and get nervous with these bits of the flight). There are a couple of key pieces of info I would prefer to have which they don’t always list, like not all of the fare rules are listed and the specials on the front page don’t say what travel dates they are valid for. Oh, and if I was putting together a 'Cheap Flights to India' wishlist, I’d have a button that says ‘When can I go for that price?’ and all the available dates would just appear. Jackpot. But look, they’re getting close and I’m saying it’s the one I’m using from now on.
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