Air India has found a route its double-decker Boeing 747, which had turned a white elephant for the national carrier following rise in oil prices.
The airline has permanently deployed the 423-seater, also called 'Queen of sky' or ' original jumbo' on the profitable and Delhi-Mumbai route.
The airline that started test flights for over a week back has now decided to extend the services and even start additional flights on the sector.
The landing spots at the Mumbai airport, which is choking with spurt in passenger numbers, are scarce. This is leading to airlines looking to deploy large planes on the sector and accommodate ever-growing passenger demand.
The Delhi-Mumbai is the busiest sector in India.
"Deploying larger aircraft is the only way out and therefore it is a good idea to bring original jumbo into the service," said a senior executive from Air India. "The load factor during the trial flights have been over 85%. Since Delhi-Mumbai route is an evergreen sector, we hope to maintain it even in future," he said.
Along with 747, Air India also flies wide-bodied Boeing 787 and Boeing 777 on the route. On the other hand, conventional Airbus 321 allows for only 172 passengers. The airline flies around two dozen flights daily on the sector, majority of it during the peak hours.
According to Bengaluru-based aviation analyst Devesh Agarwal, the four 747-400 jumbo jets are over 20 years old and fuel guzzlers. "Air India uses one of these aircraft for flights to the Middle-East catering to the labour and price sensitive market because of the high capacity economy class. Even then these flights are money losers." said Devesh Agarwal in his blog BanglaoreAviation.com.
"The other three 747s are mostly idle, except when used by the President and Prime Minister for their overseas trips, and then these flights are crewed by Air India pilots, who sit mostly idle, on the roster, while the carrier reports a pilot shortage for other fleet types," he said in the blog.
Jet Airways too wants to squeeze the available slots at the metro airports by making use of wide-bodied aircraft. Introducing the A330 will nearly double Jet Airways's capacity on the fast-growing Delhi – Kolkata, and Delhi-Mumbai routes, it said, according to a PTI report. Deploying A330s on domestic flights will allow Jet Airways to offer its passengers a considerably luxurious and comfortable flying experience equivalent to international standards, including its 'bed-in-the-sky' lie-flat beds in business class, it said. According to the release, complementing connectivity between Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata will be a completely new non-stop flight – 9W 911/912, that will connect Kochi with Delhi, aside from additional frequencies that will connect Bengaluru and Delhi with Kolkata.
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