Indian passengers can fly to Poland, Philippines without stopovers in 2019

Indian passengers would be able to fly non stop to Dar es Salaam, Manila and Warsaw in 2019 as airlines plan new routes to promote trade and tourism. At present, there's no direct flight from India to these destinations and passengers have to travel via an overseas hub. But this could change in 2019. 

Philippine Airlines plans to start a non stop Manila-Delhi flight with an Airbus A321 aircraft from March end. Bookings for the route are yet to open. Phillipine Airlines previously flew to Delhi via Bangkok. A source said LOT Polish Airlines is keen to launch five weekly Warsaw -Delhi flights in summer schedule giving India the first connection in Eastern Europe. Like Air India, LOT Polish Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance and could offer Indian passengers onward connections to Europe and the US.

Similarly, Air Tanzania is awaiting Directorate General of Civil Aviation nod to launch Dar es Salaam- Mumbai service, a source said. The airline has secured slots at Mumbai. The route was earlier connected by Air India and in absence of direct passengers travel to the East Africa country via Nairobi or Addis Ababa.

"Destinations such as Phillippines has seen a remarkable increase in Indian arrivals with more than a lakh Indians visiting the destination, it is also emerging as an incentive destination for corporates.  Similarly, Eastern Europe has become a major tourist hotspot as the destinations offer value for money holidays compared to Western Europe. We have seen a 30 per cent increase to destinations such as Poland, Croatia and Romania. Air connectivity will only add to the appeal of these destinations," said John Nair, head-business travel, Cox & Kings.

Emails to the airlines did not elicit a response.

In 2017, around 60 million passengers flew on international routes to/from India, a growth of 10.3 per cent over the previous year. This was the third consecutive year of double-digit growth. Between April-November traffic grew 7.1 per cent to 45.08 million on a year on year basis.

Though overseas hubs still carry over 40 per cent of international traffic to/from India, Indian airports are getting  more non stop links.  In 2018 there were 304 international city pairs in India compared to 230 ten years ago, International Air Transport Association said in its report in September.

"The increase in connectivity has largely been driven by airlines from South East Asia like AirAsia, Malindo, Tigerair and Scoot adding destinations beyond metros and those from the west like Air Arabia, Flydubai and Qatar Airways serving tier II cities in India," said Ameya Joshi, founder of aviation blog NetworkThoughts.

2018 also saw Mumbai and Delhi getting linked to destinations in Europe, South East Asia and Central Asia with non stop service. These include Bali (Garuda Indonesia Airlines), Kiev (Ukraine International Airlines), Manchester (Jet Airways) and Phuket (GoAir and IndiGo). Iceland's Wow Air launched service between Reykjavik-Delhi in December but the airline will suspend the service this month as the airline sees a change in ownership.

In 2018 Mumbai airport received direct flights from Milan and Tashkent - both destinations which are already connected to Delhi. Rossen Dimitrov, chief operating officer of Air Italy said the airline plans to grow the India-Italy market. " Over 200,000 Indians reside in Italy and India was visited by over 112,000 Italians in 2017," he said. An another opportunity is onward traffic. "On the first flight from Milan we had 170 connecting passengers," Dimitrov said last month on the sidelines of launch.

Rwand Air (from Rwanda) may extend its Kigali-Mumbai flight to Guanghzhou in 2019 and is seeking slots and permission from Chinese authorities while Garuda Indonesia may launch a service between Jakarta-Delhi, a source said. The airline flew one stop between Jakarta-Mumbai before pulling out of the route last March. Ural Airlines is also launching a Moscow-Mumbai flight from March end. This will be a new destination for Mumbai. Currently, Aeroflot flies between Moscow and Delhi.