Planning to book on Air India's Vande Bharat Phase 4 flights? Some tips on how to book and pay

Yesterday, I wrote about the extensive scale-up of the Vande Bharat repatriation flights will be flying in Phase 4. For Air India flights, Air India will be selling flights to and from various parts of the world in a graded fashion.

As I write this, flights from India to USA and Canada will be put up on sale at 2000 hours (8 PM IST) on June 29, 2020. A few things to note if you would like to have a shot at booking a ticket out from India.

It has been widely noted that using the App of Air India works much better than the website. So, if you have the Air India app, use that to search and book for tickets. Also, the tickets are not loaded at the exact time advertised, so it would help if you started searching a short while before the advertised time.

Air India has also pushed a new message on the app which states that the app will only be able to accept INR bookings.

Via someone who knows people in Air India very well, here is the interpretation:

For ex-India flights, you can use Air India app. Since flights are priced in Indian Rupees, any card, domestic or international can be used
However, for flights to India, everyone should use the airindia website only, since the tickets are priced in the non-INR currency.

I know these are counter-intuitive to each other, but I just wanted to layout as much information here for you to benefit from when you try and book yourselves some tickets today.

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