Sending Parents to India | The Complete Pre-Flight Checklist
Our companion guide covers how to choose the flight. This one is the list you work through afterwards, from six months out to the morning of departure, built from the things families ring us about at the last minute.
How to use this list
Our flying with elderly parents guide covers the decisions: which flight, which hub, what to lodge at ticketing and why. This page is the follow-through, arranged by when each thing needs doing.
Work backwards from the departure date. Most of what goes wrong on these trips goes wrong because a task that needed six weeks got four days.
Six months out
Confirm the passport. India generally wants at least six months of validity beyond your entry date, plus blank pages. Check the expiry now, because passport renewal is its own project and it blocks everything downstream.
Settle the paperwork question. Australian passport holders need a visa. Travellers of Indian origin may be eligible for an OCI card, which is a lifelong facility rather than a per-trip application, and which takes considerably longer to obtain. Our India eVisa guide explains which conversation you should be having. If OCI is a possibility, start it now, not before the next trip.
Book the flights. Especially for December, January or Diwali. Non-stop seats to Delhi are finite and they go first. Ask us for the quote now rather than in three months, because on this route the calendar is the price.
Lodge the assistance at ticketing. Wheelchair category, special meals, aisle seats near the facilities. All of it goes into the booking when the ticket is issued, not at the airport on the day.
Three months out
The doctor's appointment. This is the one families skip and then ring us about from a terminal. You need a letter listing the medications and the conditions, on letterhead, in English. It solves problems at security, at customs and, if the worst happens, in a hospital.
Ask the doctor two specific questions. Is any of this medication restricted in India, and how much can they carry? Some medicines that are entirely routine here are restricted there, and quantity limits apply. This is a question for the doctor and the current official guidance, months ahead.
Buy the travel insurance. Buy it the day you book, not the week you fly, because cancellation cover starts from purchase and the months in between are when life intervenes. Declare every condition honestly, including the minor ones. An undeclared condition is why claims get refused, and a refused claim in a private hospital is the worst afternoon a family can have.
Check the insurance age limits. Many policies cap out well below the passenger you are booking. Many credit card policies exclude precisely the conditions that make cover worth having. Read it rather than assume it.
One month out
Build the folder. Printed, physical, in a plastic sleeve:
- The itinerary, in large plain type, with flight numbers and times
- A card with every phone number: yours, the family in India, ours, and the hotel or house address
- The doctor's letter and medication list
- Insurance details with the emergency number on the front page
- Copies of the passport and visa or OCI card
Phones die. Folders do not. Every parent we send travels with one.
Confirm who is meeting them, by name. Not "someone will be there". A named person, with a phone number your parents physically have on paper, at a meeting point agreed in advance. Delhi and Mumbai arrivals are vast and chaotic at three in the morning, and a vague plan is how an eighty-year-old ends up standing alone next to a carousel.
Book the arrival night if the landing is brutal. If the flight lands at 3am and the family home is a two-hour drive, an airport-area hotel for that first night is a genuine kindness: your parents sleep flat and travel on rested rather than being driven across a dark city at the end of a fourteen-hour flight. Pick one on the airport side of the city so the transfer is minutes, and put the hotel name and address on the folder card above. Delhi airport-area hotels or a Mumbai arrival-night room
Sort the phone. Roaming or a local option, arranged and tested before they leave. Then have them ring you from it while you are both in the same room. A phone plan that works in principle but that your father cannot operate under pressure is not a plan.
Weigh the bags. Our baggage guide explains the weight-versus-piece trap and why the binding number may not be the one you think. If the return will be heavy with gifts, prepay the excess now; the airport counter rate is the most expensive weight in aviation.
One week out
Pack the medication in hand luggage. All of it. Original labelled packaging. Never in the checked bag, because a delayed bag becomes a medical event rather than an inconvenience. Carry more than the trip needs, in case the trip extends.
Pack a change of clothes in hand luggage too. Same logic, less serious consequence.
Confirm the assistance is still on the booking. Airlines occasionally drop these on schedule changes. It takes one phone call to check, and it is the call worth making. If we booked it, we will check it for you.
Print everything again. Airlines change aircraft and times. The itinerary in the folder should be the current one.
Have the conversation. The undignified one: will you use the wheelchair if it is there, do you know where to go if a flight changes, will you ring me from the transit airport. Our position after many of these bookings: book the assistance even if they say they do not need it. It is free to decline on the day and impossible to conjure at the gate.
The day of the flight
Get there early. Not sensibly early. Genuinely early. The queue for assistance is its own queue.
Check the folder is in the hand luggage, not in the checked bag, which is where it ends up every time.
Confirm the meeting party is confirmed. Ring the person in India that morning, not the night before.
Send yourself the flight number. So you can track it rather than lie awake wondering.
Then let go. They have flown before. They are more capable than the version of them you are picturing at midnight, and if something moves, they have our number and so do you.
While they are away
Keep the itinerary somewhere you can find it at 3am. Know that a named consultant in Sydney has the booking and can rebook, chase or intervene if a connection collapses, which is the whole reason this arrangement beats a booking website that answers with a chatbot.
And if the trip needs to change, if they want to stay longer or come home earlier, ring us. Whether that is easy or expensive depends on the fare type we bought at the start, which is exactly why we ask about the possibility at booking rather than at the moment it becomes urgent. Tell us the truth about the situation up front, even the parts that feel like too much information, and we will build the ticket accordingly.
Start a quote for your parents' trip and tell us the real circumstances. A consultant who arranges this every week will come back within 2 business hours, or call 1800 865 126 and talk it through with a person.