Air India booking check, Fare Lock and web check-in

How to look up a booking on Air India

1. 1Go to airindia.com and choose Manage booking. The India version of the site sits under airindia.com/in/en.
2. 2Type the booking reference (PNR) exactly as it is printed on your itinerary.
3. 3Enter the last name of one passenger on the booking, in the spelling the reservation uses. Air India notes that some of its systems are case-sensitive.
4. 4Read through the names, flight numbers, dates and status. A flight that used to be Vistara shows as a four-digit AI number beginning with 2.
5. 5If the flight is within 48 hours, the same details take you into web check-in. On an international flight from India, carry the confirmation slip to the counter.

Air India Fare Lock or an unpaid flight reservation

Fare Lock is Air India’s own paid hold. The fee starts at ₹300 per ticket, varies by route and is charged for every passenger except infants. It holds the fare for 48 hours from the moment you book, and Air India suggests paying at least two hours before the hold ends. The fee is not refunded and is not adjusted against the fare. If you do not pay, the booking cancels itself and the fee is gone.

The conditions are narrow. Fare Lock covers only Air India-operated flights booked on its website or app at least 10 days before departure. Sale, promotional and special fares, group bookings, codeshare and interline itineraries, and Maharaja Points bookings are excluded, and nothing on the booking can be changed while the lock is on.

Use Fare Lock when you have already decided to fly Air India on those dates and want two days to arrange the money. A flight reservation from the desk does a different job: it shows a planned route in a visa file without a fare being paid. The desk holds it without payment, and the airline alone decides how long that unpaid hold survives, which differs from one booking to the next, so it is ordered for your submission day.

Web check-in and the document check at Indian airports

Air India opens web check-in 48 hours before departure. It closes two hours before an international flight and one hour before a domestic one. One other FAQ answer gives a 60-minute cut-off for every flight, which conflicts with this, so plan on the two-hour limit whenever you fly abroad.

On an international departure from India, web check-in does not produce a boarding pass. You receive a confirmation slip instead, take it to the counter, and staff check your passport and visa before issuing the boarding pass. Counters generally open three hours before departure and close one hour before, except for international flights from Delhi, which close 75 minutes before.

• Codeshare flights cannot be checked in online on airindia.com.
• Passengers who need special assistance, and unaccompanied minors, check in at the counter.
• Online check-in for onward connections is not offered on international flight numbers AI 010 to AI 399 and AI 900 to AI 999.

What the Vistara merger changed

Vistara became part of Air India on 12 November 2024. Air India says about 270,000 customer bookings were migrated and 4.5 million Club Vistara accounts moved to Maharaja Club. Flights that keep the Vistara experience are identified by a four-digit Air India code beginning with 2, so a number such as AI 2xxx on an itinerary is a former Vistara service, not a typing error.

At the time of the merger Air India connected more than 90 domestic and international destinations with 208 aircraft and over 5,600 weekly flights. Counting Air India Express, the group reached 55 domestic and 48 international destinations. For an applicant this matters mainly when older paperwork, a travel history or a loyalty statement still says Vistara: those bookings were moved to Air India and are opened on airindia.com.

Air India’s India network and the connections it sells

Delhi and Mumbai are the hubs. Under Easy Connect, launched on 25 June 2026 as part of the government’s hub-and-spoke model, an international passenger checks in through to the final destination at the home city and clears immigration there, not at Delhi or Mumbai. The launch release starts with Varanasi and names Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Patna, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam as well.

For a visa itinerary, a domestic leg into Delhi or Mumbai and the long-haul flight after it belong on one booking. Two separate tickets imply collecting bags and checking them in again, and at a foreign hub that can mean passing immigration where you hold no visa. Partner journeys run through Star Alliance and codeshares, including a codeshare with the Lufthansa Group that was expanded in February 2025. Germany dropped its airport-transit visa for Indian nationals on 3 June 2026, which helps when a partner routing changes planes in Frankfurt or Munich.

Check that your route is actually flying before you build a file around it. Air India suspended Delhi–Washington D.C. from 1 September 2025, citing a retrofit of 26 Boeing 787-8s and the closed Pakistani airspace, and its plan for June to August 2026 paused or trimmed several long-haul and regional routes (see the table below).

When an Air India booking does not show

First rule out a typing problem. Re-enter the last name exactly as it appears on the reservation, including any double letters, and try the ticket number instead of the PNR if you have one. A Fare Lock booking that was not paid within 48 hours has cancelled itself, and a codeshare flight sold by a partner may need to be opened on that partner’s website.

A flight reservation for a visa is an unpaid hold, and Air India releases unpaid holds on its own schedule, which no one outside the airline sets. The desk’s reservation is the same kind of hold, which is exactly why the advice is to order it for the day you submit.

Air India route changes to check before you plan

Air India questions, answered