Air India has indicated that it will discontinue connecting London to North America after it finalises its European hub.
MUMBAI: Air India has indicated that it will discontinue connecting London to North America after it finalises its European hub.
The airline will be shifting these flights to the new hub and will also look at connecting a number of new trans-Atlantic destinations. The airline is currently in the process of evaluating three cities, Munich, Vienna and Frankfurt, to decide on its scissor hub in Europe.
P K Gupta, executive director, sales and marketing-passenger, Air India said, “In Europe, we are currently operating to London, Paris and Frankfurt. London will become a terminating flight. Paris and Frankfurt might be merged to fly into the new hub. In the US, we are looking at connecting Houston, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston and Washington DC after the hub is formalised.”
He said studies were on to examine the traffic patterns and the viability of connecting these destinations. He did not indicate the type of aircraft to be used or the timeline for these services.
Currently, the airline connects London to the John F Kennedy airport in New York as well as O’Hare International airport in Chicago. It also flies to Newark through Paris. Jet Airways is scheduled to start flying to San Francisco through Shanghai from mid June.
Kingfisher Airlines had also indicated plans to connect the west coast of the US to India through a non-stop flight. Gupta indicated that Air India would look to connect the US only through its European hub and will not look at flying over the Pacific Ocean.
To tide over the delay in the delivery of Boeing 787’s Air India has also brought out ads on its website to lease out aircrafts. Gupta said, “We are looking to lease around 10 aircrafts. Our own fleet today is a mix of owned and leased and a few of the leases are ending. We have to cover these also.”
The Boeing 787’s were part of a 68 aircraft order to Boeing, were earlier scheduled to replace these aircrafts. The Indian flag carrier is in the midst of completing a merger with its domestic counterpart Indian Airlines.
n_john@dnaindia.net
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