The short answer
If your destination is Amritsar itself or the districts around it, and you are travelling with elderly parents, small children, or more suitcases than adults, fly through to Amritsar. The domestic hop from Delhi is about an hour in the air. The same journey on the ground is roughly 450 km and, depending on whose estimate you take and what the traffic does, somewhere between six and nine hours. After fifteen hours in the air and an immigration queue, that is not a drive. It is a second day of travel.
Land at Delhi if your destination is Delhi or the National Capital Region, if there is family there you would be seeing anyway, if the fare gap on your dates is wide, or if the only Amritsar routing available adds a second connection rather than one.
What flying through to Amritsar actually involves
No airline flies nonstop into Amritsar from anywhere in North America. Its international network reaches a short list of Gulf, UK and Southeast Asian cities, none in the US or Canada. Every Amritsar ticket from here is a connection.
Two honest shapes. Qatar Airways through Doha is the only Gulf routing that reaches Amritsar without a second connection, because Qatar is the only Gulf carrier flying nonstop there, and from New York or Toronto it is usually the shortest total journey. The other is Air India into Delhi, then a domestic hop of roughly an hour that Air India and IndiGo run several times a day, so a missed connection is an inconvenience rather than a lost day.
What is not an option, whatever a fare aggregator suggests: Emirates and Etihad do not serve Amritsar. Neither carrier flies there at all. Only Air India Express and SpiceJet operate Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Amritsar nonstop, so an Emirates or Etihad itinerary to Amritsar normally means a second connection, and that second connection is very often back through Delhi.
Geography narrows it further. From Vancouver the Gulf hubs are not on the table at all, since Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways do not serve it, so it is Delhi and a domestic leg. From Calgary, Amritsar is a two connection trip.
When Delhi is the better answer
We book a lot of Amritsar tickets and still send people to Delhi regularly.
Land at Delhi if the trip is spread across North India. Chandigarh, Haryana or Himachal alongside Amritsar, and a Delhi arrival gives you a base and one less airport. Land at Delhi if the Amritsar routing on your dates adds a second connection, because two connections and a long night in a Gulf hub is worse than one connection and a car. Land at Delhi if the fare difference is significant and somebody is meeting you with a car. A private car booked ahead is reasonable for a group of adults with normal luggage, and not reasonable for a grandmother travelling alone with three suitcases.
And land at Delhi if you arrive at midnight and the onward Amritsar flight is not until morning. If you are sleeping in Delhi either way, the connection has bought you an extra check in and nothing else.
The Delhi to Amritsar ground leg, honestly
The road runs about 450 km along NH-44, the Grand Trunk Road. Published drive times vary widely. Some sources say under six hours in ideal conditions, others say seven to nine is realistic once you allow for stops and for town traffic through Punjab. We give the range rather than a number, because the honest answer is that it depends on the day.
Then add the circumstances you would actually be driving in. International arrivals at Delhi tend to land early morning or late at night, and immigration takes time. Clear at ten in the morning and you drive in daylight. Clear at two and you are choosing between a night drive and a hotel room you did not plan for.
The train is the other route. The corridor is well served and the better trains are comfortable, but it means a fixed departure, a transfer across Delhi to the station, and luggage handled on a platform. For parents in their seventies off a long haul, it is a lot to ask.
Easy Connect at Amritsar, and the direction it works in
Air India launched a service called Easy Connect at Amritsar on 28 July 2026. It is useful, and it works in one direction.
Flying out of Amritsar through Delhi, you clear immigration and check your bags through at Amritsar. No collecting bags at Delhi, no crossing between terminals with a trolley, straight onward to international destinations including Toronto.
Flying into Amritsar via Delhi, the inbound version was not live as of our research. Air India said at launch that it was expected within a couple of months of the July announcement. Until it is confirmed live, a passenger arriving from the US or Canada into Delhi and connecting up to Amritsar goes through the standard transit and baggage recheck.
Several pages describe Easy Connect as though it already works both ways. It does not, or it did not when we last checked. Ask us and we will check where it stands on your dates.
Baggage: the one ticket question that decides most of this
Whether your bags are checked through is decided by how the ticket is issued, not by which airport you land at. On a single ticket, one PNR, international and domestic legs ticketed together, the international allowance generally carries through to the Amritsar hop. Two bags at 23 kg stay two bags at 23 kg.
On two separate tickets the domestic leg is its own contract with its own allowance, and Indian domestic allowances are lower. A family that packed to an international allowance and booked the Amritsar leg separately can meet an excess baggage charge at a Delhi domestic counter, on bags they already paid to carry across the world.
The connection is the second risk. On one ticket, a missed domestic connection caused by a late long haul is the airline’s problem. On two it is yours. This is the first thing we check on any Amritsar booking, before the fare.
