Air India is mulling changes in its non-stop daily service to New York. Instead of the daily Mumbai-JFK flight, it will now be a Mumbai-Newark flight. The Delhi-JFK connection remains unchanged though.
Senior government officials said this tweaking in the Mumbai connection would lead to significant gains since the airline is looking to negotiate for better and earlier slots from Newark - a less busy airport than JFK. Also, a significant numbers of Indians are settled in and around Newark.
“At present, the aircraft is parked for seven to eight hours at JFK,” an official said. “This obviously costs money... the thinking is to reduce the waiting hours in New York and get earlier slots from Newark.” Moreover, this route is expected to be used by people travelling on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai leg because they prefer Newark to JFK.
The decision is significant because the twice daily service to New York accounted for a whopping Rs750 crore losses in 2008-’09.
The airline has been trying to cut down on losses. Besides restructuring the Mumbai-New York leg, Air India officials said they are trying for non-stop connections to Melbourne, Toronto, and Chicago from Delhi in the upcoming winter schedule.
In a plan outlined a fortnight back, the national carrier plans to increase flights out of Delhi by 25% in a bid to use the Delhi International Airport as an international and national hub while expanding the domestic leg to provide seamless connectivity to passengers coming from other cities on to the international leg.
Under the new plan, Mumbaikars can fly to New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Seoul, Hong Kong, and Osaka and Shanghai via Delhi.
This would not only increase connectivity to overseas destinations from Delhi but also bring down congestion at Mumbai International Airport.
Non-stop daily services are being introduced to Goa besides an increase in frequency such as 14 flights daily between Delhi and Mumbai.
