I just returned from India and successfully brought my Mavic with me.
I traveled to India/Maldives for a combined vacation. I am of Indian origin, so I spent a few days visiting family in a few different cities in India and flanked my trip to the Maldives in between. Here are a few things I learned and what you should keep in mind:
I traveled from the US to Delhi via London. Delhi is a total **** show when it comes to landing and immigration—there are thousands of people in line. I have a specific LowerPro Droneguard backpack that I packed the Mavic in. I had all four of my batteries in there as well all in LiPo safe bags along with all my accessories. Importantly, I had the propellers all off and packed separately in checked-in luggage and I did not have a battery mounted on the Mavic. The Mavic was placed in a DJI official carry bag/Sachel and in the backpack. I had additionally separated the Mavic remote controller in a different carryon bag that had my GoPro and Karma grip and accessories that my wife carried. I had a laptop, a DSLR and an Instax Polaroid camera in the bag so that there was just more electronics in there to “hide the drone” better. When I cleared immigration and customs, there were so many people around, but I was not selected to have my carry on bags screened. At that point I considered myself lucky because when you land in Delhi at customs there’s a long list of forbidden items, of which also is a large picture of a drone and says UAV/drones not allowed.
At that point I switched to travel domestically. For all domestic flights I took in India, I kept my drone inside the DJI sachel and packed in my checked in luggage. It had no batteries attached to it and it had all props removed. Props were places in a different piece of checked in luggage. Everything else was carried on. I never once had issues with this, and I took several flights throughout India domestically. People should also realize that in India, even if you have layovers and connecting flights, all carryon luggage gets scanned at the moment you get off your first flight and prior to you entering the terminal to find the gate for your second flight. The most common thing that happened to my wife and I was that they’d make us dump out all the electronics from our backpacks (there was a lot) and then they’d run the backpacks in the scanner. They never really looked at my Mavic accessories or ever inquired about anything.
I flew out of Trivandrum to Male in the Maldives, and for those flights, I still kept the drone in my checked in luggage. My return to India was via Kochi and for that flight I had the drone in my backpack in the way described above (how I had it when I entered Delhi) and I had no issues. I left India via Delhi and again had the drone on me and I had no issues.
Bottom line is, I was able to take many flights in India and out of the country with the drone. I did not once use it in India, it was strictly for the Maldives. I was really paranoid about all of this and read up as much as I could regarding drone laws etc because I didn’t wa t it to get confiscated and really wanted good footage from the Maldives. I even went ahead and contacted higher ups at the DGCA in India and was told that the new drafted laws for drones are not in law and won’t be soon and that drones are still not permitted as far as they’re concerned.
I wanted to give people a detailed account of what worked for me so you have an idea of what you’re dealing with. Again, I did this because I needed to get my drone to the Maldives for my vacation, which was awesome, and I don’t recommend breaking the law by flying your drone in India without the appropriate clearances.