NEW DELHI: In a huge relief for flyers from India to the United States, Air India on Thursday restarted its non-stop operations from Mumbai and New Delhi, bypassing the technical halt at Rome airport. The move by Iraq recently to open up its airspace that had been earmarked only for military and security operations for a decade has facilitated this change in route by the airline.
The travel time for a flyer now gets slashed by three hours, from 21 hours to 18 hours. Air India operates four flights to the US, two to the JFK airport in New York and two to Newark International Airport.
An airline source told this newspaper, “Since the Iraq airspace was shut, our ultra-long-haul flights to the US had to take a circuitous route with a halt for refuelling at Rome airport, during which passengers are not permitted to alight.
Running a non-stop flight earlier gave us a huge advantage over the big Gulf carriers like Emirates, Qatar and Etihad Airways, which had a stopover en route in one of the Gulf countries. Now, our USP has been restored.”
From Thursday, the two flights from Delhi overflew Rajasthan, Gujarat, Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, and headed to Europe and then the US, another source elaborated. When the airspace was closed, the Delhi flights, after leaving the Indian airspace, flew over Oman, Yemen, the South part of Saudi Arabia and then headed to Rome for a halt. The flights from Mumbai, which flew over the Arabian Sea before they entered the Gulf region, too, followed the same route.
Confirming the route change, an Air India official said, “We now have more flexibility in our route plans to Western nations due to the increasing options available in the global airspace.”
Asked if it helped in reducing fuel costs at a time when aviation turbine fuel costs are soaring regularly, a source said this aspect gets negated due to the lesser passenger load and cargo facility permitted. “There is a load penalty factor which happens when we carry a full tank in the plane. We need to reduce other aspects,” he said.
