Air India flies to London as BA flies off

Air India will fill the breach when British Airways flies out of Calcutta next month, ensuring that the city stays connected to London.
The national carrier will reintroduce its Calcutta-London service, taken off the roster last October, on March 29 — the day British Airways operates its last flight on the route.
“It will be a daily service with a stopover in New Delhi,” a senior official of the airline confirmed on Friday.
The minimum introductory return fare for the Air India service will be lower than the British airline’s lowest fare on the route: Rs 25,500, inclusive of taxes, against approximately Rs 32,000.
According to officials, the hassle of a stopover in Delhi will be compensated for by the revised timings. One of the reasons for the “low load factor” that had prompted Air India to scrap the service last year was the London arrival time.
“The flight used to land at Heathrow after 9.30pm local time, by which time most flights out of London would have left. This meant that a transit passenger had to wait till the next day to catch a connecting flight,” said Anil Punjabi, the chairman (east) of the Travel Agents’ Federation of India.
28/02/09 Sanjay Mandal

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