Mumbai, February 5: Air India may soon start Mumbai to San Fransico direct flight after the flag carrier carried out several successful flights from New Delhi to the American West Coast.
Currently, the disinvestment-bound Air India operates to San Fransico six-times per week, which will go up to nine flights in a week with three services being planned from Mumbai as part of the airline’s summer schedule, a senior official said in a statement.
The frequency of Air India flights to Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne are also being enhanced to five times a week from four-times and three-times a week, respectively at present, the official added.
“All our flights to the US are making money barring the one which is to Newark via London. We’ve been seeing consistently good passenger load factor on the US routes. The San Francisco flight is also clocking over 80 per cent seat factor since the launch in December 2015.”
“This has prompted to us to connect Mumbai directly with San Francisco and we plan to launch a flight service to the Silicon Valley from the coming summers,” the official said.
The proposed flight will be operated three times a week with a Boeing 777 aircraft, as per the official.
Domestic airlines summer schedule starts from late March and goes up to late October.
Besides, San Francisco, there are daily flights to New York and Chicago from New Delhi an Newark from Mumbai, as well as three flights a week to Washington from New Delhi.
The government-owned airline also flies to Newark via London from Ahmedabad.
“As there is demand for more services to Australia, we are in the process of increasing the frequency of Sydney and Melbourne flight to per week from late March onwards,” the official said.
(With input from agencies)