Sunday, October 09, 2016

AI will fly around globe, emulate Pan Am’s feat

Air India, the national carrier, is set to become the first airline after perhaps the now defunct Pan American World Airways that will operate a flight that would go around the globe. The Director General of Civil Aviation has granted permission to Air India to go from New Delhi via the Pacific route to San Francisco in the United States. However, on its return journey to New Delhi, the non-stop flight would undertake the path over the Atlantic, thus becoming the only airline in the world whose same aircraft would cover its entire journey by flying around the globe. At present the inbound and outbound flights cover their distance over the Atlantic.

Talking to The Sunday Guardian, Ashwani Lohani, Chairman and Managing Director of Air India stated that the global route was likely to become functional from 15 October and AI-173 would fly eastbound over the Pacific to its destination in California in the United States. The idea is to take advantage of the strong tailwinds that would help in cutting down both the fuel cost and the travelling time. The total time thus saved could be from 45 minutes to 90 minutes on this route to San Francisco. The AI-174 from San Francisco to New Delhi would come back via the existing Atlantic route. The non-stop flight, which is operated three days in a week, would subsequently fly on six days in a week this winter in view of the growing passenger demand.

The Delhi-San Francisco flight is amongst the longest duration long haul direct flights by any airline. Aviation experts say that the earth rotates from the west towards the east and this is also the direction of the wind speed. Thus the flight would be assisted by tailwinds all along.
09/10/16 Pankaj Vohra/Sunday Guardian
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

0 comments:

Post a Comment