Indian airline schedules would soon feature the world’s biggest aircraft in its midst as Singapore Airlines is all set to commence commercial operations of the A-380 aircraft in India from May 2014.
Singapore Airlines said that the superjumbo aircraft will have daily operations from Mumbai and New Delhi from May 30, 2014.
A total of 14 flights would be operational per week. Currently two daily flights with Boeing 777 serve each city, it was reported.
“We have been keen to operate the Airbus A380 to India and are glad that the Air Services Agreement between Singapore and India now allows us to do so,” Lee Wen Fen, Senior Vice President (Marketing Planning), at SIA said in a statement.
Adding to this David Lau, General Manager for India operations said that customers from India will now be able to enjoy onward options from Delhi and Mumbai to global destinations including Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo Narita and Zurich.
The A-380 has a capacity of 471 seats when compared to Boeing 777 of 330 seats in a three class configuration, it was reported. Aviation authorities had given their nod for A-380 operations from four airports in India including Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The approval came after four years of ban of operations of A-380 here as authorities felt that the superjumbo aircraft would take share of global traffic away from Indian carriers due to the long range and high seat capacity.