AI to deploy B777s for long-haul flights

To provide comfort and luxury to passengers in its long-haul flights, Air India has decided to deploy newly-acquired B777 aircraft on these sectors from the winter schedule starting October 25.

The national carrier has also decided to introduce daily flights from Washington to Kolkata from December 1.

“Air India will deploy the B777s to all its seven West-bound destinations in Europe, the US and Canada, and one to Tokyo. The airline will begin its services to Newark, Paris, Toronto and Tokyo using the B777 from October 25, beginning of the winter schedule,” an Air India spokesperson said.

At present, the comfort and luxury of state-of-the-art B777 aircraft are available on Air India flights to Chicago, New York, Frankfurt and London.

Air India, which is in the red, has ordered the acquisition of 111 new aircraft, of which it has received and inducted 64 so far. These includes nine B777-300ER, eight B777-200LR, 15 each of A321 and A319 aircraft, besides 17 B737-800 aircraft for Air India Express.

“The airline has reworked its winter schedule in such a manner so as to provide the passengers with a product that matches the best in the industry, both on international and domestic sectors,” the spokesperson said.

In the winter schedule, the airline will operate its Amritsar-London-Toronto flights with B777-300ER from Amritsar four days a week, while on the remaining three days the flight would operate from Delhi.

This will give the passengers from Delhi a direct connection to London-Toronto. Also, Air India would operate its thrice-weekly flight to Paris and four times a week flights to Tokyo with B777-200LR instead of A330 aircraft, the spokesperson said.

The airline has also decided to increase the frequency of its Mumbai-Riyadh and Delhi-Riyadh routes to 11 a week from the existing nine. A daily non-stop flight would also be introduced between Chennai and Muscat.

The Air India Express flight on the Kozhikode-Muscat-Kozhikode route will become a daily flight as against four times a week. Similarly, the Kozhikode-Doha-Bahrain flight will become a daily flight while Kochi-Muscat-Kochi flight will operate five times a week instead of twice.

Apart from this, Air India Express will soon be introducing all-economy A320 aircraft on Dubai, Sharjah, Kuala Lumpur and Colombo sectors from various cities in India.