Thaindian News

Mumbai/New Delhi, July 14 (IANS) Air India will develop a major hub at the newly-launched Terminal-3 at New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport to connect “India to the world”, an Air India (AI) official said Wednesday.
“The airline aims at re-positioning asa fundamentally different carrier, with an increased focus on providing a seamless passenger experience, while also connecting maximum passengers through non-stop and one-stop routes to destinations on its network,” a spokesperson said.

The AI hub will grow to its full potential over the next few months. AI has partnered with Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) to provide a choice of destinations and schedules out of its Delhi hub.

“We would introduce non-stop services between Delhi and Melbourne which would be the only non-stop link between India and Australia. Also part of the plan is to introduce non-stop services from Delhi to Toronto and Chicago in addition to the existing non-stop services to New York,” the spokesperson said.

AI would be serving a total 22 international destinations from Delhi - New York, Chicago, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Osaka, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Bangkok, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Kathmandu and Kabul.

“With the planned increases, AI would be operating 143 international services per week offering about 33,000 seats per week in each direction on services out of Delhi…representing an increase of nearly 50 percent,” the official said.

On the domestic front, AI’s operations from Delhi would be strengthened with the introduction of daily non-stop service between Delhi and Goa and increased frequency of operations between Delhi and various domestic destinations.

“We will have 14 flights everyday to Mumbai, five flights every day each to Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. Other than that, we will have four flights every day sto Amritsar, three flights to Patna and two flights every day to Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Cochin,” he added.