AI seeks more US flights to bridge the Gulf

New Delhi: With Air India’s Gulf monopoly under threat and likely to end very soon if the civil aviation ministry has its way, the state-owned airline is now pitching aggressively for direct flights to the US and Australia to make up for the loss.
Apart from the Mumbai-New York and the New Delhi-New York direct flights, which were announced recently, the airline also plans to start 30-40 non-stop flights a week to the US (Chicago and Newark). That apart, daily flights to Boston, Dallas and Fort Worth are also being planned among others, which will increase the number of daily flights even further. It also plans to have direct flights to Sydney and Melbourne every week by the end of this year or 2008-beginning. The aim is the replace the Gulf with the US and Australia as the airline’s largest revenue earner.
Air India will have daily non-stop Mumbai-New York flights starting August 1. This will be followed by daily flights from New Delhi to New York from November. Air India is also looking at Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Washington, and San Francisco.
12/07/07 Anirban Chowdhury/Business Standard

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Categories: Air India Jul 2007, Foreign Jul 2007