Come July and the capitals of India and USA will be linked with a direct flight. Air India will have a nonstop service between Delhi and Washington, three times a week to begin with, on the Boeing 777. And from May, AI will fly direct between Delhi and Copenhagen using a Dreamliner. In fact AI recently announced a slew of new flights like linking Bangkok with Kolkata and Chandigarh as well as increase in frequency of popular flights like from Delhi to Port Blair, Ahmedabad, Leh and Bangkok.
Its Europe network will grow with Copenhagen as it flies direct from India to several cities there like London and Birmingham in UK, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Milan, Frankfurt and Vienna. With the Washington flight, AI has strengthened its North America network as it already has nonstop to New York, Newark, Chicago and San Francisco. It also has a one-stop to NYC from Ahmedabad via London.
India-North America direct flights are becoming popular with flyers — despite a premium pricing — because they cut down travel time drastically over one stop flights. In the recent past, AI and Air Canada have been adding direct services. Air Canada, which made Delhi-Toronto a daily flight from last November, will link Mumbai and Toronto from July.
AI and Air Canada take the Pacific route to fly nonstop from Delhi to West Coast destinations like San Francisco and Vancouver. In fact, AI’s Delhi-SFO is the world’s longest nonstop in terms of distance flown. Air Canada has a ‘seasonal’ Delhi-Vancouver flight which will fly till April 8, 2017, and then resume in October, 2017.
American Airlines, which stopped its Delhi-Chicago nonstop on 2012 when it filed for bankruptcy, is planning to have a nonstop to India. Among US carriers, currently only United has a nonstop between New York’s (technically New Jersey’s) Newark airport and India.
