New Delhi, Oct 29 (PTI) Air India is examining thepossibility of operating flights from Mumbai to Tel Aviv asthe carrier weighs various options amid issues of overflyingrights, a senior airline official said.
While the flagship carrier has been expanding itsinternational presence, efforts to restart services to Israelare yet to take off. There were plans to commence the flightto Tel Aviv earlier this year.
In the last four years, the airline has started servicesto 14 international destinations, with the latest being directflight from the national capital to Danish capital Copenhagen.
According to the official, the flight to Tel Aviv couldhave been started earlier, but the route available as of nowis very long.
A flight of more than nine-hour long journey to theIsraeli city from Delhi would make the operations"commercially unviable" since duration of a flight on astraight route to this destination would take only aroundfive-and-a-half hours, the official told PTI.
Against the backdrop of geopolitical issues, there areissues related to getting permission to overfly certaincountries to reach Tel Aviv.
In case, Air India is not getting permission to fly overcountries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, other options willbe looked at, the official said.
"Instead of starting a flight from Delhi to Tel Aviv, wemight start a flight from Mumbai to Tel Aviv, which would cutdown the nine-and-a-half hour route to seven-and-a-half hourroute," the official noted.
In March this year, Air India had announced that it wouldstart flights to Israel in May with three weekly flights onthe New Delhi-Tel Aviv route. However, the plan did notmaterialise.
Later, during a visit to Israel in July, Prime MinisterNarendra Modi had said direct flights would be launchedbetween Delhi, Mumbai and Tel Aviv to encourage people-to-people contacts.
Currently, the Air India group flies to 44 overseas and75 domestic destinations.
The airline has flights to Tokyo, Washington, Stockholm,Sydney, Hong Kong, Kabul, Colombo, Seoul, Singapore, Londonand Madrid, among other foreign cities.
To revive the loss-making national airline, thegovernment is working on the modalities for strategicdisinvestment of Air India. PTI RAM IAS ARDSBT.
This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.
