Air India rejigs UK, USA services from Today

Today Air India's Boeing 787-8 fleet making its US debut with inaugural Ahmedabad-London-Newark flight. Air India has also resumed its transatlantic fifth freedom flights between London and Newark. Delhi loses one of the seven flights to London (three by Air India) at the cost of Ahmedabad's own four weekly non-stop flight to London. 

London

Starting today Air India is making major changes in its London Heathrow operations. While it maintains the steady 28 weekly departures, two more non-stop destinations Ahmedabad and Newark are being added ex-Heathrow. The airline is resuming the transatlantic fifth freedom flight which it traditionally enjoys. Among the new services ex-Heathrow, three weekly Ahemedabad-Newark flights (AI 172) via London while the fourth weekly Ahmedabad-London flight (AI 176) terminates at London. At the same time Air India's Delhi-London frequency is down to double daily from three daily earlier and comes at per with British Airways on that route. Air India has also changed instrument on one of its Delhi-London (AI 112) flight, moving to all Dreamliner service ex-Heathrow. The airline also ends London Heathrow's direct connection to Amritsar (AI 116: same flight number with change of aircraft in Delhi). And by next month Air India is expected to move to Heathrow's Star Alliance terminal 2 to offer better onward connections across its alliance partners. 

Flight No	Origin: Departure	Destinations: Arrival	Freq	Status
AI 172	London: 12:30	Ahmedabad: 02:00+1	2,4,6	New
AI 176*	London: 12:35	Ahmedabad: 02:05+1	7	New
AI 161	London: 09:45	Delhi: 22:50	Daily	Cont.
AI 112	London: 21:30	Delhi: 10:40+1	Daily	Cont.
AI 116	London: 12:30	Delhi: 01:30+1	Daily**	Cancelled
AI 130	London: 13:15	Mumbai: 02:45+1	Daily	Cont.
AI 171	London: 12:30	Newark: 15:00	1,3,5	New

New York/Newark

It sees Air India's largest US operations with 17 weekly departures from greater New York area. Air India now serves daily direct flights to both New York JFK and Newark airports from both of its Delhi and Mumbai hubs, with non-stop Delhi-New York JFK, and Mumbai-Newark and one-stop Delhi-Newark (via Mumbai) and Mumbai-New York JFK (via Delhi). From today Air India is resuming the transatlantic Newark-London flight (AI 172) with fifth freedom traffic rights which Air India traditionally enjoys. Ahmedabad which used to have daily one-stop flight via Mumbai (AI 144), now sees three weekly flight via London (AI 172). And the domestic leg of the Newark-Mumbai flight (AI 144) has been from re-routed from Mumbai-Ahmedabad to Mumbai-Delhi.

Flight No	Origin: Departure	Destinations: Arrival	Freq	Status
AI 172	Newark: 00:20	London: 12:05	1,4,5	New
AI 144	Newark: 16:25	Mumbai: 16:40+1	Daily	Cont.
AI 102	New York: 15:10	Delhi: 14:25+1	Daily	Cont.

San Francisco

In December 2015, the Indian flag carrier returned to the US west coast by starting with three weekly service on board it's 238 seater (8F, 35J, 195Y) Boeing 777-200LR. Air India has only three of those aircraft in its fleet capable of flying such long distance. In Q1-2016, Air India's direct flight carried total of 7,945 passengers against 9,282 seats deployed resulting 86% load which is just phenomenal within months of service launch. On the Delhi-San Francisco sector, Air India strikes a rare success as evident from load and yield as well, it charges a premium for its non-stop service. The carrier plans to remove the entire first-class cabin and replace with economy seats, leading to marginal increase in seat capacity on the route. Now that one more Boeing 777-200LR being freed up following instrument change (B77L to B788) in one of its Delhi-London services (AI 111/112), Air India plans to increase Delhi-San Francisco frequency to daily flight from the winter 2016-17 season. 

Washington
Air India has planned expansion of its US service following FAA's upgradation of India's aviation safety standards. While San Francisco went on to become the first new destination added, Washington-Dulles too was on the Air India's radar for quite some time now. And it was widely anticipated that Air India would launch Washington-Dulles flight from its Delhi hub by the end of 2016. But the launch has been postponed due to shortage of long range aircraft. Now the Delhi-Washington flight is likely to come up only by mid-2017.