Northwest To Start India Flights In June

Northwest Airlines of the US yesterday announced that it will launch its Indian operations on June 3, in alliance with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Northwest vice-president (Atlantic region) David C Wookey, who made the announcement, said the company was in talks with Indian Airlines to forge an alliance or a code-sharing arrangement.

One round of talks were held on Tuesday, he said, adding that the negotiations would resume after six weeks. However, nothing concrete had emerged so far, he said.

Northwest, a $9.14 billion company, is also looking for a marketing arrangement with Air India for destinations like Bangkok, Singapore and Tokyo, and is open to tie-ups with private domestic carriers like Jet Airways. Wookey is a former chief executive officer of Jet Airways.

 

The US airline will operate flights to Amsterdam three time a week from Delhi (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) and four times a week from Mumbai (Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday).

It will fly DC10 aircraft, configured with 34 world business class and 247 main cabin seats.

Two US-bases carriers United Airlines and Delta are already operating flights to and from India.

KLM is Northwests global partner and holds 25 per cent equity in the US company.

The alliance, Wookey said, covered a network of over 399 destinations in 80 countries across six continents.

Wookey said Northwest was eyeing India because India is a very encouraging market, a key business destination.

The international traffic to the country was expected to grow over 7 per cent over the next five years, he said.

He did not rule out the possibility of the company starting independent freight operations at a future date.

KLM general-manager Vincent A M Knoops (India, Nepal and Bhutan) said the launching of the joint operations would not affect the Dutch airlines plan to increase its flight frequency to and from India through a revision of the bilateral agreement.

Knoops said KLM wanted to operate from South India too, especially Chennai and Bangalore, for which it would like to double its Indian flights from seven to 14.

Northwest is the oldest airline in the US and the fourth largest in the world with a fleet of 399 aircraft.