An international to domestic connection India handles through Delhi or Mumbai is not a walk from one gate to another. The Indian airport you land at is your port of entry, so the border formalities happen there, before the domestic leg. Delhi's page gives the order: immigration, then your checked bags, then customs, then the transfer to the domestic flight. What changes from airport to airport is the part in the middle, where you either stay in the same terminal or move to another one.
The sequence at a glance
- Before landing: the e-Arrival card, for foreign nationals and OCI card holders.
- Immigration at the arrival hall.
- Baggage reclaim: collect your checked bags.
- Customs: green or red channel.
- The terminal fork: same terminal, or a shuttle to another one.
- Check in again for the domestic flight.
- Security, then the gate.
Before you land: the e-Arrival card
India's Bureau of Immigration now takes arrival details online. Its home page says foreign nationals and OCI card holders can complete and submit the e-Arrival card within 72 hours before arriving in India, on boi.gov.in, on indianvisaonline.gov.in or through the Indian Visa Su-Swagatam mobile app, and it notes that the card is arrival information, not a visa (Bureau of Immigration, captured 2026-09-27).
Delhi Airport's own e-Arrival page adds two points that matter for a connection. It says Indian nationals do not need to fill the form, and it lists "transit passengers exiting the airport" with an onward flight from Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 among the people it applies to (Delhi Airport, "E-Arrival Form", captured 2026-09-27).
Steps 2 to 4: immigration, baggage reclaim, customs
Delhi's page puts these three in this order, and Delhi's and Mumbai's pages both place them at the airport you land at, not at your final destination.
Immigration. Mumbai Airport's arrival guide tells passengers to follow the signs to the Arrival Immigration Hall with passports and visas ready before they reach the counter, and it lists the arrival card alongside them (Mumbai Airport, "Arrival Guide", captured 2026-09-27). What documents your nationality or visa type needs is set by the immigration authorities, so check your own case on the Bureau of Immigration site.
Baggage reclaim. The same Mumbai guide says display screens show the belt number for each flight's checked luggage. Delhi Airport's transfer page lists baggage collection as a step for every passenger transferring from an international arrival to a domestic departure, at Terminal 3 and at the other terminals alike (Delhi Airport, "International to Domestic Transfer", captured 2026-09-27). Mumbai's transit guide puts it conditionally: if your baggage is not tagged to your destination, you must collect it and check it in again (Mumbai Airport, "Transit Guide", captured 2026-09-27). The practical reading is to look at the tag on your bag at check-in abroad, ask the airline what it will do with the bag in India, and then follow the airport's signs on the day.
Customs. Mumbai's arrival guide describes two channels: green for passengers with nothing to declare and red for passengers carrying dutiable goods. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs sets out the framework behind that choice: passenger clearance is governed by the Baggage Rules, 2016 and related regulations, and duty applies to the value of dutiable goods above the duty-free allowance (CBIC, "Customs Clearance of Passengers At a Glance", captured 2026-09-27). Allowances differ by passenger category and are revised from time to time, so check the current figures on the CBIC site before you fly if you are carrying anything beyond personal effects.
Step 5: the terminal fork
Once you are through customs, the sequence splits in two.
At Delhi (DEL), all of these steps happen at Terminal 3. Delhi Airport's transfer page describes two paths from there. If your domestic flight also leaves from Terminal 3, you follow the yellow signs to the domestic transfer area after customs, and the page says plainly not to exit the terminal building. If it leaves from Terminal 1 or Terminal 2, you exit the terminal and use the free inter-terminal shuttle bus or a cab (Delhi Airport, "International to Domestic Transfer", captured 2026-09-27). Delhi's commute page says the free shuttle departs every 20 minutes. It says to follow the signs after baggage claim and to show your boarding pass at the kiosk to get a transit bus coupon before you board, and it lists the Terminal 3 pick-up near Pillar no. 10 (Delhi Airport, "Commute from Terminal 3", captured 2026-09-27).
At Mumbai (BOM), the transit guide describes a complimentary shuttle between Terminal 1, which it labels domestic, and Terminal 2, which it labels international, for eligible passengers. The arrival guide gives the pick-up points: Terminal 2, Level 1, Ground Transportation P4, and Terminal 1 between Departure Gates 1 and 2 (Mumbai Airport, "Transit Guide" and "Arrival Guide", captured 2026-09-27).
The terminal each flight uses is on your booking and on the airport's departure screens, so check it again after you land rather than relying on what the booking said weeks ago. If you connect somewhere other than Delhi or Mumbai, read that airport's own transfer page for its version of this fork. The directory page for airports in India is a starting point for finding the one on your ticket.
Steps 6 and 7: check in again, then security
Delhi's transfer page spells out the end of the cross-terminal path. At Terminal 1 or Terminal 2 you enter through the Departure Level and check in again, then clear security and head to your boarding gate (Delhi Airport, "International to Domestic Transfer", captured 2026-09-27). On the same-terminal path you stay inside Terminal 3 and follow the yellow signs to the domestic transfer area (Delhi Airport, captured 2026-09-27).
One small thing saves time here. Keep the boarding pass or booking for the domestic flight easy to reach, because Delhi's shuttle kiosk asks for it before you board, and the check-in desk at the other terminal is where the domestic leg begins again.
How much time to allow
The airport pages used for this guide do not give a time for each step, and no page can tell you how long the immigration queue will be when your flight lands. The clearest official guidance in this set comes from Mumbai. Its transit guide, answering how much layover time to allow for an international-to-domestic or domestic-to-international connection, recommends at least 3 to 4 hours for international connections and 2 to 3 hours for domestic connections, especially if you are changing terminals (Mumbai Airport, "Transit Guide", captured 2026-09-27). Delhi's pages describe the process in detail but, on the pages fetched for this guide, give no single connection figure. The one published time there is the shuttle's 20-minute departure interval.
Read any figure as a planning buffer, not a guarantee. The steps that add time are outside your control: an immigration queue, a slow belt, a shuttle that has just left. And the buffer starts when you land, not when you were due to land, so a late international arrival eats into it before immigration begins.
If the first flight runs late and you miss the second, what happens next is set by the airline's own published policy, and that is the page to read before you book a tight gap. If the two flights are on separate bookings, read both airlines' policies.
How TrackMyWings helps
TrackMyWings™ is a live flight-tracking platform in development, India-first in its go-to-market. A private beta shipped on 2026-08-24, Android only, on the Play internal testing track. Public launch has no fixed date. Gate and status alerts are planned for launch, and on a connection like this they will matter most right after landing, when the next thing you need is the domestic leg's terminal and gate. Until then, the airport's departure screens and your airline are the sources to trust for the second flight.
Questions people ask
Do I clear customs at my first Indian airport or at my final destination? At the first airport. Delhi's and Mumbai's pages both place immigration, baggage collection and customs at the arrival airport, before the domestic transfer.
Do Indian passport holders need the e-Arrival card? No. Delhi Airport's e-Arrival page says Indian nationals are not required to fill it. It applies to foreign nationals and OCI card holders.
Will my bag go straight through to my domestic destination? Do not assume so. Delhi lists baggage collection as a step for international-to-domestic transfers, and Mumbai says to collect and recheck any bag not tagged to your destination. Ask the airline at check-in abroad and look at the tag.
What if I miss the domestic flight? Contact the airline operating the domestic flight. Its own published policy says what it will do, so read it before you fly rather than at the counter.
Sources
- Delhi Airport, "International to Domestic Transfer", https://www.newdelhiairport.in/international-to-domestic/, captured 2026-09-27
- Delhi Airport, "Commute from Terminal 3", https://www.newdelhiairport.in/commute-from-t3/, captured 2026-09-27
- Delhi Airport, "E-Arrival Form", https://www.newdelhiairport.in/disembarkation-form/, captured 2026-09-27
- Bureau of Immigration, India, home page e-Arrival card notice, https://boi.gov.in/boi/, captured 2026-09-27
- Mumbai Airport, "Transit Guide", https://csmia-mumbai.adaniairports.com/en/passenger-guide/transit-guide, captured 2026-09-27
- Mumbai Airport, "Arrival Guide", https://csmia-mumbai.adaniairports.com/en/passenger-guide/arrival-guide, captured 2026-09-27
- Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, "Customs Clearance of Passengers At a Glance", https://www.cbic.gov.in/resources/htdocs-cbec/customs_clearance_of_passengers_at_a_glance.pdf, captured 2026-09-27
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