Air India is to launch a new long-haul link between New Delhi and San Francisco before the end of this year to link India’s developing technology economy to Silicon Valley as well as to support the tens of thousands of Indians who already work in Silicon Valley.
The new route will complement the carrier’s existing US network of Newark Liberty, New York JFK and Chicago O’Hare and will be its longest non-stop service at a distance of around 7,670 miles and a 16 hour flight time. It will be served by a Boeing 777-200LR and will operate on a three times weekly basis from December 2, 2015.
The growth in the US market follows the Federal Aviation Administration upgrade of Indian air safety operations in the first half of this year to Category 1 under its International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme, and was revealed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a trip to Silicon Valley this week, the first visit to California by an Indian head of state since the early 1980s.
Air India’s arrival in California was anticipated as part of a commitment from India’s Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma to grow international connectivity in and out of India as the national carrier grew its fleet with modern generation airliners.
However, in the build-up to the announcement following Prime Minister Modi’s speech at the SAP Centre in San Jose, it had been suggested that the new link to San Francisco would originate in the Indian tech city of Bangalore, which at around 8,700 miles would have seen it trump the new Emirates Airline Dubai – Panama City route as the world’s longest scheduled non-stop service.
Alongside the new long-range route, Prime Minister Modi also revealed plans for Air India to introduce a direct link between Ahmedabad and London, a route it last served non-stop in October 2008, according to OAG Schedules Analyser data. This city pair is currently served by the carrier via connections in Delhi and Mumbai, while a direct through service is offered by Air India on the Birmingham – Delhi – Ahmedabad routing.
Elsewhere, it has emerged that Air India is once again planning to split its Italian operations from the end of this month after initially scheduling the change to take effect during the summer months. Instead of offering three weekly flights on the Delhi – Milan – Rome – Delhi routing and four weekly flights on the Delhi – Rome – Milan – Delhi routing it will instead offer three direct Delhi – Milan and four direct Delhi-Rome flights each week from October 25, 2015. These will all be operated using Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner equipment.
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