Air India today decided to resume flights to the US and Jet Airways to North America, three days after complete disruption of West-bound flights from India due to volcanic plumes from Iceland over Europe.
However, the flights for European destinations of all the airlines continue to remain suspended.
Air India will operate its flights from Delhi to New York and New York to Delhi and also Mumbai-New York and New York-Mumbai flights from tonight with a diversion through the polar route, an Air India spokesperson said.
A polar route refers to an aircraft route across the uninhabited polar ice cap region.
Delhi-JFK (New York) flight AI-101 will depart tonight at 0025 hours (IST) and reach and New York at 0825 (local time).
Similarly, flights from New York AI-102 will leave at 17.05 hours (local time) and reach Delhi at 1915 hours (IST).
The flight (AI-141) to New York will leave Mumbai at 0045 hours (IST) and reach the American city 0910 hours (local time).
Jet Airways has started its Delhi-Toronto and Mumbai-New York flights last night with a technical stop over at Athens in Greece.
Some airlines have started talks with various foreign missions in India to take care of the stranded passengers from those countries.
Maintaining that they had already provided full accommodation and other facilities to hundreds of passengers for past 2-3 days, they also said they were finding it difficult to continue this facility any longer.
Airline sources also said the carriers cannot be held liable for disruption of flight operations due to such circumstances.
In a bid to ease the booking on their flights for European destinations once the route is open, Jet Airways is offering free return tickets for Bangkok or any destination in India to the passengers who wants to go to western countries.
This is expected to ease the pressure of booking on the airlines once the situation gets back to normal, sources said.
According to the sources, 200 British nationals were stranded here and are being offered these tickets.
